The Task at Hand
by ErrantTruant
Summary: When an untested company of Imperial Guardsmen are sent to investigate a mysterious distress beacon on a distant mining world, the Grim Darkness of the 41st Millennium will test them to their limits and beyond.
1. Chapter 1

**The Task at Hand**

Colonel Julius Zano heaved a frustrated sigh. It just didn't seem fair.

There was war out there, a mere two systems away. A magnificent conflict to be waged against the vile Orks in defence of the Imperium, so close he could almost feel it. And yet amongst the entire Jeron Illustrious 1st Light Infantry, it was he and his company, the "Lucky" 7th, who had been selected to perform an investigative mission that might see them miss the conflict entirely. Perhaps the God-Emperor was testing him. Or perhaps, despite the auspicious nickname of Zano's company, he simply had the most atrocious luck imaginable. He found himself distractedly fiddling with the gold string adorning his uniform's epaulettes as he often did when anxious. He was a tall but slender man in his mid-forties and his severe cheekbones, furrowed brow and neatly trimmed brown moustache gave him the look of a professional soldier. Or at least Zano hoped so. He had never actually been in a battle before. His unit had been only months ago a Planetary Defence Force Regiment from the peaceful agri-world of Jeron Minor, until the Administratum, in all its wisdom, had called for the raising of new Imperial Guard Regiments in the sector to help break the siege on the Ork ravaged Forgeworld of Brovonius in the neighbouring system.

Jeron Minor supplied Brovonius's billions of workers with food, water and even shipments of fresh oxygen, so it was widely felt on the agri-world that it was a natural evolution of their partnership to now send warriors. The battle on the Forgeworld had begun four standard months ago, when Blujun Bonekrakka, a Warboss of the greenskin tribe known as the Deathskulls had invaded the system in search of Imperial weaponry to loot and add to his mighty stockpile of pilfered resources. The thieving xenos had blasted the planet's defences into scrap with an armada of haphazardly constructed Blitza Bommas and Dakkajets, and had then settled in the ruins to loot whatever they saw fit. The Imperium would not let the foul xenos invasion go uncontested and responded in kind, dispatching several full regiments of Imperial Guard to besiege the planet and win it back. Among the Jeron enlisted men rumours of the scale of battle ran rampant, with notions ranging from the logical to the absurd. Some claimed that that Saint Hezekaius, the Great Worker of Brovonius had sent them visions of the fight to come, or that they had heard from the Mordian Guardsmen they shared transport with, that the Black Templars had already begun to liberate the world on one of their endless crusades. Being an officer of the upper command echelons,Zano looked on these whispers with both weary tolerance and a little amusement. He possessed actual information regarding the scale of the siege, and in truth it was growing ever more extensive. Divisions from the 137th Cadian, the Mordian Fighting 65th, the Strabonite 9th Mechanized and Mogul Khamir's legendary Rough Riders were already engaged in near-constant action under the command of Lord Admiral Dallinesh Strod, a native of Brovonius himself. Best of all, an entire company of the Adeptus Astartes chapter known as the Hawk Lords were reported by the fleet Astropaths to be on their way. The war for Brovonius was not simply going to be the Illustrious 1st's first taste of combat; it was going to be the most glorious battle in the whole segmentum. And Colonel Zano had intended to be ready for it. In the 14 years since his well-to-do family had first purchased his commission in the Jeron PDF command, Zano had personally led the men of the 7th in thousands of drills and mock-battles. The men under his command knew him and respected him and even liked him. They had memorized his deployment patterns and strategies to the minutest detail, and were as eager for real war as he was. Fourteen years of peace seemed an incurably dull thing when the news-picts supplied a constant feed of the Imperium's thrilling victories across the segmentum and beyond. Truly, to be a soldier in the God-Emperor's own 41st millennium was to be a man with both purpose and destiny. At least that was what Zano felt. But so close to the long-awaited glory of war against the vile greenskin hordes, that destiny had been derailed.

As the Jeron Illustrious 1st was a new guard regiment, they did not yet possess enough transports to convey their 10,000 strong force to Brovonius. Two transport-cruisers from the Mordian 80th, en route to reinforce their fellow division on the Forgeworld had been diverted to pick up the Jeron men and bring them to Brovonius. There was little shame in that, and Zano secretly hoped that the 1st could perform with enough valour in the siege to merit being granted transport vessels of their own by the Imperial Navy when the fighting was over. In the meantime the Jeron men had been able to share the Mordian transport amicably, although truth be told they found the Iron Guard to be as cold as their regiment's name suggested. Still, the promise of battle kept spirits high and hopes higher, especially among Zano's men.

Or it had until the beacon had been detected.

The captain in charge of the transport, a taciturn naval veteran named Argus Whytelament, had brought Zano and the other three Jeron regimental colonels to his briefing room, informing them along with the ranking Mordian officers that his ship's Astropaths had picked up a weak distress beacon hailing from the mining colony on Valindril X, one of the ten small satellite worlds orbiting a red giant star between Jeron and Brovonius. Some manner of distortion was interfering with the transmission, leaving the message itself staggered and incomplete, but from what had been deciphered it was confirmed that beacon contained Inquisition clearance codes, under the authority of one Inquisitor Hagen of the Ordo Malleus, demanding military aide be sent to him at the mining colony with all due haste. The beacon had been activated only recently, and thus it was imperative to send a unit at once. Colonel Triphon, one of the Jeron officers and a curious one for as long as Zano had known him, had then asked what specific kind of aide was required. The beacon's message, or what could be deciphered from it, had been highly vague on that point. Yet a request from the Inquisition could not be ignored. Since the Mordian vessel was on its way to the siege, Captain Argus had elected to dispatch a single company to investigate and aid the Inquisitor. And that duty had fallen, the God-Emperor only knew why, to Colonel Zano and his men. After selecting the five platoons he felt best suited for the mission, two-hundred and thirty four men all told, and assigning his subordinate Lieutenant-Colonel Baswell to temporary command of the rest of his battalion, Zano had prepared himself in his quarters with a feeling of slight but pervading shame. Even now, only forty minutes before the assigned departure over Valindril, he was still in his quarters, oiling the teeth of his Chainsword for the third time, and mentally going over the myriad of deployment patterns he had practiced for rocky terrain. The information he had been given regarding Valindril was rather frugal, but he was resolved to use it to his best advantage. It was the largest of the star's moons, and its landscape dominated by vast canyons and ore-rich mountain ranges. Ceramite mines were plentiful, and a large mining colony which supplied Brovonius had been established there at least three-thousand years ago. There were no defence forces registered aside from the usual small militia. The colony's population was barely a hundred-thousand strong, just miners, their families and the local Ministorum personal. Apart from a series of raids by the Dark Eldar five hundred years past, which had been halted by the efforts of the Salamanders Space Marines chapter, there was absolutely nothing about the planet that Zano could see might merit the attention of the Inquisition. Yet from what could be deciphered of the beacon's mysterious message, Inquisitor Hagen had found something he needed the aide of the Imperial Guard in dealing with.

Zano shook his head. The Inquisition was a secretive body, utterly inscrutable and often quite terrifying to ordinary men. An Inquisitor had come to Jeron-Minor in his father's time, to investigate ancient ruins on the great southern plateaus of Jeron's smaller continent. They were just a series of tall rocks set in concentric patterns, often visited by travellers. The Inquisitor had ordered them bombed from orbit and all crops within a hundred-thousand miles radius to be burned. It had taken a major effort by the rest of the farming districts to cope with the loss, and Jeron-minor had barely made its quota of shipments to Brovonius that year. Zano wondered what this Inquisitor Hagen would be like, and whether or not he had diverted them away from an important battle in order to have them destroy some old xenos sculptures. It was dangerous to think so idly of the Inquisition, of course, but Zano found he couldn't help himself. Perhaps it was just pre-mission stress. Even if it turned out to be a trifling task, it would still be his first real assignment as a guard regiment. That merited some anxiety, did it not? Zano thought to himself.

His ruminations were interrupted at a knock at his door. Being on edge Zano was momentarily distracted and nicked a finger on the razor-edge of one of his chainsword's many triangular teeth. Swearing under his breath and putting his wounded digit in his mouth, the colonel searched for a bandage to bind it with while muttering "Enter." over his shoulder. With characteristically rigid step, his aide-de-camp, Master-Sergeant Tobin Grull, appeared in the doorway. He was clad in the Jeron Illustrious's new uniform, a well-tailored adaptation of their old PDF cream-white jodhpurs and sharp brown tunics, while his chromium breastplate and greaves positively gleamed. Grull was one of Zano's best assets, doggedly loyal and attentive to a fault. If he wasn't waiting on orders he was polishing his boots or his prized Power Fist, which gleamed even brighter than his armour in the single overhead light of the Colonel's quarters.

"The men are loaded up and ready to be sent planetside Colonel," he reported with a stiff salute. "Your Chimera is being checked over for a final time, but it will be ready when you come. The rest of the command squad are inside of it waiting."

"Fine, fine Grull," the Colonel said distractedly, bandaging the bleeding finger on his right hand.

"Do you need some assistance Colonel?" Grull asked helpfully, though still maintaining his sombre expression of attentive respect.

"No, I just had a slight accident. It is of no consequence. Tell the men I will be with them shortly."

"Yes sir. Very good sir," Grull nodded. But he did not leave, which Zano thought was odd.

"Is there something else Grull?" He inquired distractedly, rubbing his injured finger against his thumb to test it.

"I was merely wondering sir; do you think if we finish this Inquisitor's work for him quick enough we'll be able to make the siege with the rest of the regiment?" Grull asked. There was a hopeful note in his voice that Zano felt guilty at hearing. For he had to crush it, as he had had his own hopes of making the battle at Brovonius crushed at Captain Whytelament's orders.

"No, Grull. I'm sorry to say this but I doubt it very much," Zano sighed. "The Mordians don't want to leave one of their transports behind when they will need it at the Forgeworld. As soon as we're loaded off the lander will return to the ship, and we are to be left to handle the matter for the Inquisitor alone."

"We won't have any way to get back?" Grull asked in surprise.

"Well, there is a possibility we can commandeer some mining vessels after the mission is completed, or perhaps the Inquisitor can acquire us some means of making it to Brovonius, but I'm afraid I can't promise anything right now."

Grull bit back on whatever thoughts he might have had on the matter and nodded curtly, stiffening his upper lip.

"That's all right sir. You'll reckon something out, I'm sure," he said with genuine faith.

"I hope so Grull. I don't want to miss the war any more than you do," Zano assured the Sergeant. But he couldn't shake the feeling that he and his men were going to anyway. Once again a sense of resentment seemed to blossom in the back of his mind. Why him? Why his unit? He'd waited fourteen years for some real action, a real fight. To be plucked away from all that mere days before it could become a reality to be sent on an Inquisitor's errand instead was…

Zano shook his head, quelling his troubled thoughts. His feelings didn't matter. Orders were orders, and as sore as he felt about missing the siege, he knew that the beacon could not be ignored.

Perhaps there would even be a fight for his men on Valindril, as unlikely as that seemed.

The landing craft seemed to groan in discomfort as it entered the thin atmosphere of Valindril. There were no viewports in the solidly constructed vehicle, but Zano had glimpsed the moon before departure, as the Mordian ships had exited the warp and rested momentarily over the orange star and its curious moons. Valindril had seemed like a cloudy grey ball, unwelcoming and dull. As the landing craft reached the surface and came to slow, grinding halt, then opened its disembarking hatches to allow the men and few light vehicles of the company to exit, Colonel Zano felt his opinion would not easily change.

The Mordians had put them down on a flat expanse of rock, a single mile away from the facility where the Inquisitor's beacon was transmitting. The surroundings were gloomy and uninteresting. Mountains obscured the horizon at every turn. Great outcroppings of slate-coloured stone jutted out from the ground at irregular angles. The sky was moody and lightning wracked the clouds in the distance, sending rumbles of thunder through the mighty stone canyons. _Charming_ , Zano thought to himself. There seemed to be no sign of life anywhere in the desolate terrain. Even the mining colony's transmission centre had refused to answer the Mordian transport's hails as they were approaching the moon. Static had been the only reply, possibly due to atmospheric distortion, or perhaps because some idling Mechanicus novitiate had fallen asleep at his post. It didn't really matter. The Jeron 1st's mission was to meet with the Inquisitor and provide support for his holy mission, not bandy words with the head overseer of a minor resource facility. Colonel Zano shifted uncomfortably and mentally chastised himself for the lapse in his thoughts. This mine provided materials for the Imperium's war-effort, and therefore each and every worker here played a part in the God-Emperor's plan, no matter how small. It was unfair to think ill of them merely because his unit had been directed away from the war to aid an Inquisitorial mission. Setting his shoulders, Zano stalked briskly back towards the members of his command squad.

Master-Sergeant Grull, Doctor Vangyre, the Medicae officer, Corporal Kellick with his long-range Vox system and Sergeant Atticus, the Company Standard bearer were all waiting for Zano in the rear of his personal Chimera transport, which was revving its engine near the lander's large embarkation point. The machine-spirit of the vehicle seemed eager to put its tracks on solid terrain soon. The robust carrier was painted in a grey-to-brown camouflage pattern and equipped with searchlights and an improved Vox-system for broadcasting orders. Zano had left the vehicle after the initial conference with his officers, assigning positions and orders to the platoon leaders, then had spent the rest of the descent to Valindril among the enlisted men of his company, inspecting their gear, bestowing words of caution or of confidence depending on where they were needed. Beside Zano's command Chimera, the Jeron were moving on foot. Three lightly armoured scout Sentinels rigged with multi-lasers took point at the head of the disembarking column, their lean mechanical legs carrying them forward with bird-like precision. A single Hellhound flame-tank rolled out after them, a potent but lightly armoured vehicle that would probably see no action unless it was required to burn down some offending overgrowth with its turret-mounted heavy flamer. If there were any plants which could survive on this grim vista, that was, Zano mused to himself. He pulled his tunic collar a little tighter, feeling a brisk breeze from outside the transport nip at his cheeks. The temperature on Valindril was unpleasantly cool, at least compared to the warm summers on Jeron that he and his men had left behind. Zano briefly wondered what the weather on Brovonius was like. As he stepped into the Chimera's rear access hatch, his command squad saluted.

"Are we ready sir? The Mordians want us off in a hurry, and I'd rather not rouse their ire." Grull informed him.

"Then we shall try not to delay them." Zano said cordially. "We're ready to go, Driver, take us out." From the forward compartment the Chimera's operator nodded and pushed the vehicle slowly forward. It took its place at the head of the Jeron line, a personal standard that Zano always followed. He would never ask his men to go into action while he stayed in the rear. An officer should set an example, he felt, and his Chimera would give the men of the 7th a point to rally around in case of ambush or sudden battle.

"If our coordinates are accurate, the beacon's location should be somewhere in the facility ahead of us, beyond that canyon. I want the Sentinel lance to scout the way before the rest of the company," Zano instructed. "We don't know that anything is wrong here, but since an Inquisitor of the Holy Ordo has seen fit to ask for our aid it seems prudent to proceed with caution."

Grull nodded in agreement and Corporal Kellick immediately voxed the Colonel's orders to the waiting Sentinels. Zano looked out a view-port in the Chimera's side to see the narrow-limbed walkers stalk forward across the harsh terrain, kicking up small clouds of loose soil with each step.

"Have the rest of the men form up for a fast march, Heavy weapons teams in the centre of the line, if you please," Zano continued. "And put Tirman's platoon on rearguard. If anything should happen I want those grenade launchers in a good position."

"What do you think we're in for sir?" Sargent Atticus asked, cradling the Jeron standard in his arms. The banner of the Illustrious 1st, 7th Company was a pair of crossed Las-rifles on a half-checkered field of blue and brown, and Atticus held it with tender care.

"I couldn't say," Zano shrugged. "With the Inquisition here it could be anything."

"What Ordo is he from? Do we know sir?" Vangyre inquired. The Medicae was an educated man from Jeron's upper-classes, much like Zano. He had questioning blue eyes, a smooth-featured face and a gentle but purposeful voice that helped calm wounded men whenever an accident had occurred in the Jeron's battle-drills or training exercises.

"Ordo Malleus. What do you suppose that means?"

"Not sure. That Inquisitor Phortinbras who ordered the plateau bombings was Ordo Xenos, if I recall correctly," Vangyre mused. "I suppose we're not going to be looking for alien ruins then."

"But what are we here for?" Atticus wondered.

"We'll learn that all in good time," Zano promised.

Outside of the Chimera's hull the last of the men had cleared the Mordian transport and the huge landing craft ignited its engines, which seemed to roar a woeful farewell to the men of the Jeron 7th as it climbed higher into the tempestuous Valindril sky and then disappeared into the thick, stormy clouds of the upper atmosphere. The Jeron were alone now, and alone they would remain until they found that beacon and the Inquisitor. Looking out the slit viewport in the Chimera's side, Zano watched his soldiers march purposefully behind the carrier. Despite his misgivings about the mission he was proud of his men. They marched with speed and precision, but remained aware of their surroundings. All those drills, all those simulations and exercises had not been for nothing. The month in the Gyleian Mountains, conducting cold weather and thin atmosphere warfare training. The hot, throat-parching weeks in the Kulekas Basin, practicing survival and reconnaissance. The pitched battles they had staged in the Durthlund Forests. 14 years of mock fighting. It had not been for nothing. Or so Zano hoped, but then his introspection was interrupted by the dull pinging of Kellick's Vox-set.

Kellick flicked a switch and held the listening gear to the side of his head. He looked up with a troubled expression. "Sir? It's the Sentinels. They've found something," he explained, handing the speaker and listener to his commander.

"Zano here, what is it?" The Colonel asked.

"Colonel?" buzzed the rasping vox-feed of the lead Sentinel pilot. "We've reached the outskirts of the mining facility. It looks deserted, but there's a wrecked shuttle here. You need to see this."

Zano stared in shock at the devastated wreck in front of him. It was an Aquila Lander; or rather it had once been one. Zano had only seen a craft of its make once before, in an information packet he had been given for a simulated rescue of VIPs. The ship was often used to transport wealthy, high-ranking or otherwise important individuals to a multitude of locations. It had a unmistakably unique wing design and raised canopy, making it look like a pilotable version of the holy emblem on Zano`s own peaked cap. If it hadn`t been for that signature shape though, Zano knew he would never have recognized it. The Lander was a smashed ruin. Handprints left in dried blood stains caked its battered surface. Dents and fractures were rent and gouged into the vessel's tormented surface at every point. One of the distinctive wings had been ripped off entirely and the vessel's original black coat of paint, signifying it as property of the Holy Inquisition, was barely visible beneath the damage. And yet the thing which bothered the colonel the most about the wreck was the utter absence of Las-scoring or other weapon-fire. He was not the only one who noticed.

"If I didn't know better, Colonel, I'd say this thing was smashed by hand," Sergeant Grull murmured at his side, the fingers of his power-fist flexing nervously.

"Hands," Zano corrected solemnly. "Lots of them."

"Who would be mad enough to do such a thing?" Vangyre asked. "And why?"

"I intend to find that out with all due haste," Zano said, straightening his shoulders and assuming a commanding air once again. "Order the men to investigate the settlement. Search pattern Sebastus. We may be dealing with traitors or secessionists. Perhaps the Inquisitor's presence here frightened the populace into a mob. Men can act in the strangest manner when the Inquisition examines them. Hidden feelings rise to the surface. Perhaps a rebellion was brewing here or…" Zano found his words trail off as an idea, a horrifying idea, struck him.

"Or…what sir?" Sgt Atticus asked in bewilderment.

"Never mind. Let's just get started searching that facility," Zano ordered.

The facility turned out to be built directly around the base of the predominant mountain in the area, a towering and ugly monument of stone that cast a dull shadow over the cluster of buildings at its base. Some thirty buildings, mostly square-set hab-structures and large storage buildings were built in a disorderly sprawl across the rocky ground. There were transport vehicles parked near an unloading yard which lay at the farthest side of the area, but no workers were present. The whole place seemed deserted and unnaturally so. The men were on edge now. Zano could see it in their eyes. Something was very wrong here.

"I want six groups of six men each to fan out and search these buildings. Look for people, clues. Anything to let us know what might have happened or where the Inquisitor might be."

Before the search parties could even begin to conduct a sweep of the area, a door was wrenched open. From the darkened interior of the hab-unit a single figure stumbled forward into the overcast light. Zano gasped. It was a man, clad in a shredded miner's coverall. His hands and boots were stained in bright red blood. He stared for a moment at the assembled soldiers in dull surprise.

"In the Emperor's name man, what happened here?" A trooper asked the stranger. Zano knew him as Guardsman Flince from Harrick's platoon. He was a good sort, and well-liked in his squad.

Flince barely had time to even cry out before the miner pounced onto him and bit into his throat.

It had taken eight guardsmen to restrain the berserk miner. Two had been badly clawed in the attempt and Sargent Harrick's nose and arm had broken. There hadn't been much that could be done for Guardsman Flince, but Vangyre had tried. His sleeves were still blood-stained from his efforts, but his ministrations had been in vain. The guardsman's body had been wrapped in a tarp and respectfully set inside of Zano's Chimera at the Colonel's insistence. Most of the men were in shock over the attack. The miner's unprovoked actions had been completely unexpected, and remained inexplicable. Zano had half considered shooting the wretch, but at the moment he was their only chance to find out what was going on here, so he had ordered the murderous miner roped to the side of a storage tank, where even now he strained against his bonds furiously, but did not speak. Four guardsmen trained their las-rifles on him while Vangyre tried to examine him to see if his condition was being caused by some malady. The rest of the Jeron examined the perimeter of the facility and began to carefully investigate the hab-units and storage structures. Zano had ordered a priority to be placed on the building the maddened worker had emerged from.

It did not take long for something to be found.

As Zano conferred with Grull, waiting for Vangyre to finish his inspection of the prisoner, a pale-faced corporal from Kurkson's platoon appeared, looking rather nauseated and unsteady on his feet.

"Did you find something?" Zano barked, more fiercely then he had meant to.

"Yes sir. We found bodies in one of the habs. More miners, but they-" The corporal bit his lip and closed his eyes. "They had no heads. Each one had been decapitated. We think it was an execution of sorts, possibly ritual in nature."

Zano turned and stared at the captured miner, who struggled against his bonds, foaming at the mouth and staring furiously through bloodshot eyes at his captors.

"Vangyre, what in Holy Terra is he afflicted by?" Zano asked as the Company Medicae walked towards him. "Is he mad? Is it some disease?"

"It was hard to examine him. Damn near bit me twice. He has signs of malnutrition and a lot of recent bruises and superficial cuts, but as far as I can tell it's not a physical malady he's suffering from. He seems to have had a psychotic breakdown, but I don't have the first clue as to what caused it. He won't speak at all. Just grunts and snarls."

"Perhaps I can get something out of him." Zano scowled. He was on edge. All the men were. They had trained for battle. Open warfare against an enemy army, or search and destroy action against rebels and insurrectionists. Tyranids, they had practiced for. Orks, they had anticipated. Even the mercurial Eldar had been simulated and prepared against. But investigative work? Interrogation of lunatics? It was not what the Jeron were meant for, and Zano found himself suppressing anger once again that he had been chosen for this task. As he approached the bound miner and glared down at him, he felt his anger intensify. The wretched murderer seemed to sense Zano's mood and seemed to struggle against his bonds even harder.

"My Name is Colonel Julius Zano of the Jeron Illustrious 1st Regiment, 7th Company." Zano glowered down. "I am here in search of a member of the holy Inquisition. We discovered his shuttle nearby, completely wrecked. Do you know how that happened? Do you know his whereabouts? Answer me and I may consider letting you live to face judgement for your crimes, instead of executing you on the spot."

Despite the threat in Zano's words, the miner seemed unfazed. His foam-specked lips pulled back into a sneer, but he still said nothing.

"Why did you murder your fellow workers?" Zano asked, angered by the worker's silence. "What cause could you have possibly had to do such a thing?"

"What cause?" The prisoner slurred. The words sounded thick in his mouth, as if he was forcing them out through sheer hate. Zano stepped back in surprise at the virulent tone, but the words the miner uttered next came as even more of a shock. A vile sentence uttered in a voice so fraught with zealous fanaticism that it made many of the Jeron quiver.

"Blood for the Blood God!" He roared, spitting blood-flecked foam with each profane word. "Skulls for the Throne of-!"

Zano whipped out his laspistol and shot the miner square in the face before he could finish his dread utterances. The colonel's pistol had been high-charged, and at such a close range the results were dramatic. The man's head literally _exploded_ , spattering the container behind him with viscera, and the now-headless corpse slumped in its bonds, blood spurting from its ruined neck. Zano stared, and felt coldness inside that had nothing to do with the cool temperature of Valindril's atmosphere. None of the men had realized it, but the colonel had acted without thinking, instinctively killing at the sound of the cult mantra. Had he done it to prevent the cultist from spewing more words of malevolence at them, or had the cry somehow unleashed his desire to kill? As uneasy as it made him feel to admit it, Zano didn't know. All he did know was that he couldn't stand there, frozen with indecision in front of his men. He turned around to address them, licked his dry lips, cleared his throat and spoke as loud as and clearly as he could.

"This world has been poisoned by the lies of the Archenemy." Zano announced, struggling to keep his voice from trembling. "We must find the source of this madness and stop it. We must find the inquisitor. Only he will know what to do."

"How are we going to find him sir?" A visibly shaken Grull asked. He seemed unable to draw his eyes away from the corpse of the miner.

"First we find that beacon. Corporal Kellick? Do you have a steady fix on its location yet?"

"I-It's difficult to say, sir," The Vox-operator stuttered, fumbling with his equipment. A steady clicking sound was coming from the hand-held machine.

"Nevertheless, say it," Zano ordered.

"The atmospheric distortions coupled with the area's geography are making it hard to pin-point the exact location, but if I had to make a guess I would say it's transmitting from underground. Probably from within that mountain, beyond the next rise."

"In the mines," Zano sighed, not looking forward to what would come next. "All right. Grull, spread the men out. Find some maps or charts. Scour the perimeter and make certain there are no more of these heretic madmen around. I want to be down in those tunnels and chatting with our Inquisitor in the next hour."

 _If he is still alive, that is._ The Colonel thought grimly.


	2. Chapter 2

The entrance to the mines was not far from the main facility. The heavy loading rigs which carted unrefined Ceramite to storage and refinery had left obvious tracks in a tough dirt road to a large security door built into the mountainside. A chart procured from a shift supervisor's office showed that the mines or at least this section of them extended sixty levels down into a myriad of caves and excavated tunnels. More bodies had been found in the course of the search, all headless. Obscene, malefic symbols painted in now-dried blood had also been uncovered. Zano could feel the unease among the company turning into fear, and cursed the luck that had seen his men draw this duty.

One of the Ruinous Powers had afflicted this world. That much seemed obvious. On Jeron their existence was rarely spoken of. Preachers expounded on the need to resist their temptations without ever saying what those might be, or who would be tempting. Names were forbidden from being spoken, in order to keep the mind free from their corrupting influence. The powers of Chaos were to be turned from, ignored. The thoughts of the people were to belong to the Emperor alone. The Archenemy was just a rumour, a whisper, a vague cause to be fought against without knowing its true nature. Even Zano, in all of his years of preparation had learned precious little about the nature of the enemy they would face on Valindril. Everyone knew the stories of course, about the Heresy and the Traitor Legions, about the daemons of the warp who preyed on the frail mortal souls of humanity where they could. Priests of the Ecclesiarchy delivered sermons on the subtle nature of the Dark Gods, but never elaborated on what that nature was. In the Planetary Defence Force, data packets and scripts concerning the combat strategies of the Archenemy had been impossibly hard obtain. The men of the Lucky 7th had never run even a single full exercise on combating Chaos warriors. It was the one thing they were unprepared for. And it would be their first challenge as a Guard Regiment. Zano could not help but see the irony of the situation, but he did not let it show on his face. He couldn't. The men looked to him for direction, and as long as they saw their Colonel was unafraid, they would persevere too.

Sgt Kurkson's platoon had handily uncovered the locking codes for the mines and gotten the powerful doors open. Zano had hand-picked twenty-eight men along with Corporal Kellick and Doctor Vangyre to accompany him into the mines. The steadfast Grull he left in command of the men topside.

"I want this area secured," Zano explained to his aide. "Set up the heavy bolters in defense pattern Gregarus. Use these crates for cover if you need to. The rest of the men should dig in further down the road, within the bolters firing range. The Sentinels and the Hellhound will stay back at the facility with Kurkson and Harrick's platoons to give us advance warning if anything comes that way, or to secure a fall-back location if things should become ugly here. We don't want a repeat of that rout in the Meveri Hills. This time the enemy will be fighting for real, not for an extra serving of rations and a free round in the local pub. Stay alert and keep the vox channels as quiet as you can. We don't know who could be listening."

"Will do, sir. I'll hold things down here until you return with the Inquisitor," Grull promised.

"And I will hold you to that," Zano smiled, feeling his unease momentarily lessen at the staunch faith displayed of his subordinate. But it returned the moment he stepped into the darkened interior of the tunnel ahead. There were a few lights set into the walls and powered by thick cables, but aside from their meagre glow the tunnels were dark and unsettlingly vacant. Mining kit lay abandoned in senseless patterns. Storage units were open and unguarded. Crates and barrels of various sizes had been knocked over and never righted. The whole place was ominously haphazard. Something had panicked the workers here, and no one had come back. No one sane, at least.

"Is the signal clearer?" Zano asked Kellick, glancing back at the mine entrance as he did. The exit from the tunnel seemed further away than he would have thought.

"We need to find an elevator," Kellick said, studding the readout on his sensor-gear with a careful eye. "The beacon is at least a hundred metres deeper than our current position."

"Is there an elevator close by?" Zano asked Trooper Mavald, a sharp-eyed youth who had volunteered for the PDF a few months before the forming of the Regiment. Zano had chosen Mavald to carry the overseer's charts because the young guardsman had been a cartographer's apprentice before joining up. It always paid to know what skills a man brought to a unit, Zano felt. Mavald held the map up in the glow of light and pointed at a corner.

"Should be one just through that tunnel there," he explained confidently. "It goes nine levels down and then we'll need to move to a secondary lift. I've found one on that level as well," he continued, pointing out a mark on the chart.

Zano nodded at him approvingly. "Thinking two steps ahead, are we, Trooper Mavald? Good. Continue impressing me!" he smiled.

Mavald grinned back and pointed out the way, a service tunnel near to their left. Zano ordered the men to fix bayonets and form into a two staggered lines before they entered the thinner area. He couldn't help but think of the ill-fated exercises in the Austern Caverns on Jeron a few years back. A section of tunnel had collapsed during the training mission and six of his men had died, crushed by rubble. Zano had retained a hatred of caves ever since. The walls seemed to press in on him from every side, and the poor illumination seemed to contort every flickering shadow into a looming enemy just out of sight. Everyone was on edge. The mines were a claustrophobic environment, and it only became worse. The elevator Mavald had led them to was large enough for the whole group to go down, but Zano sent three guardsmen and the secondary vox-operator, Rafen, down first to be certain that the ride was safe. With a loud rattling noise, the lift descended into the deeper darkness of the shaft, and the men were lost from sight. A few minutes later Kellick's set chimed and the way was declared to be clear. Zano knew that his caution was costing them time, but he refused to blunder his way into the mines recklessly. He had already lost one good man on this damned planet, and Zano didn't want more senseless casualties on his conscience.

Reaching the bottom of the first shaft, Zano found the four troopers waiting eagerly. They had found some discarded lamps in operable condition near the elevator, and passed them out. Batteries were low, but for an hour at least the Jeron would be able to see.

In theory, anyway.

The walls of the mine were deep red, but here and there an off-white vein of raw Ceramite could be seen. The temperature seemed oddly warm, and Zano caught himself licking his dry lips nervously. He knew no one could see him, but still chastised himself for showing such nervousness in front of his men. It would do no one good for him to seem intimidated by the cavernous path before them. The tunnels were silent, but every now and then a strange yawning feeling seemed to pass through the ground beneath them, subtle enough that it could be missed unless you were on edge, but the Jeron men most definitely were.

"How much further Mavald?" Zano asked quietly as another dark cavern opening appeared beside them. The mining lights were far and few between on this level, and the scavenged lamps barely penetrated the darkened side-passages.

"Another seventy meters straight, and then down another side passage," Mavald explained. Doctor Vangyre, being armed only with a laspistol and his medical bag, had elected to carry one of the mine lamps, and held it up for the trooper to see the charts more clearly.

"And the beacon, Kellick?" The Colonel inquired.

"Still below us sir. The readings are getting clearer though, so we're definitely closing in."

"Good," Zano muttered. "The less time we have to spend in this-"

The deep, coughing sound of a power-drill whirring to life halted Zano's words. The manic screaming of twenty blood-thirsty miners quickly followed it. A clutch of the maddened wretches, daubed in blood and profane sigils had burst out of a side passage like vermin from a rat's nest. They brandished bore-drills, pipes and hammers, or merely wild fists.

"Flamers out!" Zano shouted, pulling his chainsword off the hook on his belt and flicking it's power switch on. Troopers Pote and Kevar wordlessly ignited their weapons and bathed the incoming group with searing promethium. The fires lit the tunnels up with a macabre glow as the miners were scorched and charred. Incredibly some of them managed to sweep around the burst of flames or even ran through it, hurtling themselves into the Jeron while still on fire. A few were dropped by scattered las-fire, but half of the blood-crazed workers still managed to close in, swinging their weapons with wild strength. The Jeron troopers were taken aback by the ferocity of the charge, and the darkness and flashing lights disoriented them. Four of them went down immediately, though in the dark Zano couldn't see who. The colonel had been at the front of the column, but since the miners had struck from a side tunnel he was out of range to deal with them. He intended to change that.

"Hold fast! Form a bayonet line" He shouted, trying to get near enough to engage the maddened attackers with his chainsword. The weapon stirred to vicious life and roared in the air as he drew closer to the miners. The air was thick with the stench of burning flesh and hot coppery blood. The screams of the flamers burning victims were drowned out by roars of their comrades as they snarled and cursed at the Jeron. In the glow of a fallen lamplight Zano saw one ugly wretch with a profane symbol marked on his forehead thrust a hefty boring drill into the ribs of Trooper Mavald. Blood spewed out from the guardsman's torso as the mining equipment tore his flesh and uniform to shreds. Zano lunged forward and brought his chainsword down in an arcing slash that severed the miner's weapon arm at the elbow. The tattooed scum roared in pain, but had no time to counter-attack as the colonel's next stroke cut his legs out from under him. "Vangyre! Man down!" Zano bellowed, before charging down another of the cultist miners. His chainsword shredded the workers unprotected flesh with brutal efficiency. The rest of the Jeron troopers, their courage bolstered by Zano's assault began to fight with renewed fervour, stabbing out with bayonets and combat knives or clubbing the cultist miners with the stocks of their las-rifle. Though fierce, the cultists proved no match for the Jeron and were killed to the last, but they had done their share of damage.

As Zano executed the last of the still-living wounded with his laspistol, he turned to see Vangyre kneeling on the ground, shouting for more light and desperately trying to stabilize Mavald's condition. There had been other injuries, minor lacerations and Trooper Pote received a mild concussion but the young guardsman Zano had so recently interacted with was the worst. For fatalities, they had lost three Troopers. Orras, Dalgren, and Hitch. Orras and Hitch had been new recruits like Mavald, who'd signed on to the guard when the news from Brovonius came, but Dalgren had been a six-year PDF veteran. Zano remembered his rough but friendly voice and incorrigible love of pranks. He tried to recall if the man had family back on Jeron. He thought he did. Zano muttered a quick prayer to the God-Emperor and then cleared his throat.

"Men! Form up. Check the tunnel and see if any more of those bastards are trying to hide from us. And get these bodies piled up. I want them burned," Zano demanded tersely.

"Colonel?" Zano heard weak voice from somewhere behind him and turned. Mavald was looking up at him worriedly.

"Trooper Mavald. Good to see you're still with us," Zano said, squatting down slowly next to the wounded trooper and the company Medicae.

"S-sorry about this Colonel," the young guardsman mumbled. Dark red blood was dripping from his lips. Zano knew enough about field medicine to understand that at least one of his organs must have been punctured.

"Don't worry lad. It isn't your fault," Zano said gently. "I'm sure we can get you through this." But one look at Vangyre's drawn face told the Colonel that no matter optimistic he might be, the situation was dire.

"I-I didn't…bleed on the…charts, did I sir?" Mavald managed to ask. Zano looked at Trooper Rafen, who had taken Mavald's pack and kit. They were bloodied and dirty, but the mine-schematics were miraculously undamaged.

"No lad, they're fine," Zano assured Mavald.

"Good," the youth said. He tried to manage a smile, but instead coughed up more blood.

"Just relax, Mavald. It's going to be alright," Vangyre said. Mavald nodded, but his eyes were wide and full of pain. He seemed to want to speak again, but when he opened his lips the only thing that came out was a wet, ragged wheeze, and then nothing. The young guardsman's eyes stared sightlessly into the dark of the cavern. Vangyre closed them with his hand.

Zano sighed. Another of his men had been lost to this mad world, another casualty of a mission which he had never wanted to be sent on. Mavald had been smart, intuitive, loyal. He could have made a fine officer one day. But the young soldier had no future now. And there would be more following him. For a moment Zano felt himself lose focus, felt his anger at the death of the young guardsman flood through his mind like a raging red wave. A desire to abandon this place, forget the mission. Leave the cultists and the Inquisitor both. But Zano steeled himself with the knowledge that to do so would be to make Mavald's death in vain. It would strip the Lucky 7th of all honour and purpose. And above all else, it would be cowardice of worst kind. Zano was no coward. He was an officer of the Imperial Guard, and he felt he had better resume acting like one with all due speed.

"Put his body with the others," he instructed the Medicae. "Let's get to that beacon before we meet any more of these madmen." Then standing up he asked loudly, "Does anyone else know how to read these charts?"

They finally found the beacon's source. Or at least according to Kellick's sensor and the map, they had. From to the schematics of the mine, which had so far proved accurate, the Jeron should have been in front of a storage shed, built into the rock foundation of a particularly narrow cavern located on the seventeenth level down from the entrance they had come from. But there was no shed to be found. Just a smooth rock face that looked cold and unyielding in the bare light of the mine lamps.

"Kellick, what's going on?" Zano asked quietly.

"I'm not sure Colonel. According to the sensors that beacon should be in front of us."

"The map says there's a storage shed here. Why isn't it here?" Trooper Onmund asked, anxiously. Mavald's replacement had good eyes, but was not the strongest of nerve. Zano shifted on his feet and stared at the rock wall before them. They had not come so far to be defeated by mere stone. His men were now six-hundred meters or more beneath the earth. It was even warmer down on this level than the ones preceding it, and the yawning pulse in the walls seemed to grow stronger with each passing minute. Zano had an ominous feeling about the place. After the bloodshed in the tunnels above, he was anticipating anything.

"How many grenades are we carrying?" he asked. "We might be able to blow this rock apart."

"An explosion could lead more of those cultists to us," Vangyre warned.

"I know, but I don't see how else we're going to get through," Zano countered, walking up to the rock-face. "After all, this thing is solid-"

He stopped mid-speech, as before his eyes the rock seemed to ripple ever so slightly. Frowning, Zano put his hand out to touch the rock, but instead his fingers went right into the stone as if it wasn't there. It dawned on Zano suddenly that this was because it actually wasn't. The rock was some manner of illusion.

"Arrange yourselves in defence pattern Asterius, then walk through the stone," he snapped.

"Sir?" Trooper Onmund asked his eyes wide with disbelief.

"The rock is an illusion. Go through it," Zano ordered. "I think the shed is behind it."

And so it was. The illusion had seemingly been placed four metres from the actual position of the storage building. When Trooper Onmund tried the door, it was barred from within. Zano frowned at it, wondering what lay behind the barrier. He didn't like the fact that some magic or madness was playing with their senses, and decided to not take chances.

"On the count of three, smash that door down," he ordered Troopers Kolt and Lerman, the largest members of the unit. The burly troopers counted off and then kicked the door hard in unison. The wood splintered under the force of the blows and as soon as it fell away Troopers Pote and Kevar were pointing their flamers inside, searching for targets.

"Colonel?" Kevar said slowly. "I think we've found what we were looking for."

Zano stomped into the room, his hand in his chainsword's handle. It was unlit, but the mine-lamps his men were aiming in showed three inert forms on the floor, and a single, seated man at the back edge of the shed.

"Hello?" Zano asked cautiously, keeping his finger on his laspistol's safety-stud. He looked hard at the seated man, trying to see if he was wounded

The object of his attention cut an intimidating figure, even sitting as he was on a plain wooden packing-crate, his arms folded in concentration. A short power-sword, inactive, lay at his side, and an ornate inferno pistol rested in his lap. Despite his posture suggesting rigid self-control, he looked ill. His face was pale and the veins on his furrowed brow stood out under the skin. His hair was a golden leonine mane, strikingly thrown back from his head, but also unkempt and greasy, as if he had been running his hands through it constantly and had not had the chance to wash it in some time. His right eye was closed tightly, but his left, an augmetic replacement that stood out fiercely amid the lines in his craggy face, gazed coldly at the Jeron men.

"At least one of you had best have a full canteen," the seated figure muttered, still keeping his good eye closed. There was a rough, gritty quality to his voice that made Zano wonder how long he had been without food or water.

Trooper Pote handed over his water-flask and Zano gave it somewhat gingerly to the man. He drank all its contents without preamble or thanks, and tossed the empty container to the ground.

"How many of you are there?" he barked.

"I am Colonel Julius Zano of the Jeron Illustrious 1st Regiment, 7th Company." Zano stated cautiously. "Are you the Inquisitor who activated the beacon?"

"Of course I'm the bloody Inquisitor who activated the beacon! The name's Damaron Hagen of the Ordo Malleus." The man rumbled, drawing his Rosette out as proof of his rank before dropping it back into his coat. Zano recognized the symbol and nodded deferentially. He decided not to hold the man's behaviour against him, for it was obvious he had been in a dire situation for some time.

"We have encountered some hostile activity in our search for you. I was merely being cautious." He explained.

"Never mind that. How many men have you brought?" the Inquisitor asked forcefully. "What is your operational strength?"

"We have taken some casualties on our incursion into these mines, but you will have more than two-hundred of Jeron's finest infantry at your disposal." Zano announced proudly.

"Two hundred!" The Inquisitor shouted in disbelief. "A single company? Is that all?! I asked for any and all military aid to be diverted here! The transmission should have brought more than-"

"Your beacon's message was distorted," Zano tried to explain, unable to comprehend why the Inquisitor was so angered. "We were not able to discern the full contents of it. As such it was deemed by my superiors that a single company would most likely be able to fill your needs. My men are disciplined and well-"

"There were over twenty-two thousand people on this world." Hagen barked. "If even half that number has succumbed to the Ruinous Powers then this planet is doomed and so are we all!"

Zano fell speechless as the scale of the situation dawned on him. There could be more than twelve thousand cultists on this planet? And against them he had brought two hundred and…

"How? What caused this?" Zano managed to ask.

"I suppose as few of you as there, you still should be brought up to speed," Hagen growled. "I was dispatched to this world eighteen days ago in order to investigate claims of psychic apparitions, cult activity and outbreaks of violent behaviour. I brought a small retinue of loyal comrades and a twelve-man squad of Storm Troopers in case the situation grew dangerous. These three are all that is left of that original number."

"What's wrong with them?"

"Nothing. I'm keeping them in a psychic trance. I didn't want any of our presences giving us away to those blood-crazed heretics."

Hagen seemed to twitch, and the still forms of the three Storm Troopers slowly began to move. One reached for his weapon as he saw Zano's men, but the Inquisitor spoke out.

"These are our reinforcements Major Faulton, such as they are," Hagen explained gruffly. "Get yourselves together. I'll need you all soon."

The full-faced helmets of the Storm Troopers prevented Zano from reading their reactions, but the three acknowledged Hagen's orders and began silently checking over their equipment.

"You're a Psyker?" Zano asked, amazed at the feat of power the Inquisitor had displayed.

"Yes. And a damn good one," Hagen growled. "It's how I've kept us alive this long despite our diminished numbers. When I arrived on Valindril the situation had become far worse than was originally implied in my briefing. The local administrator had turned much of the populace over to the power of chaos in the duration. I executed him and tried to impose order with help of the local security forces, but the source of this heresy did not stem from the administrator's influence. It was something deeper, older. I tried to seek out the source of the corruption, but the challenge proved too much. The miners had been killing and taking heads into these tunnels secretly. They were bringing them here for a reason. They were repairing something they'd found. A Summoning Shrine, buried in a massive cavern far below the surface. It was ancient. Could have even predated the Great Crusade. I was barely able to catch a glimpse of it the first time I reached the place, but that was enough. It was unmistakably Khornate in design."

Zano grimaced at the harsh death promised in the sound. The name of one of the Ruinous Powers. The god of blood and murder. _Khorne_.

"My retinue and the remaining security forces were ambushed. The same thing happened to my pilot and ship on the surface. Servants of the Blood God rioted in the hab facilities and dragged much of the remaining populace off to be slaughtered. The madness being emanated by the shrine proved too much for some of the security personnel. They went mad with bloodlust and turned against us before I could destroy the shrine. It was a slaughter. More and more of the damned cultist kept showing up, drawn by the bloodshed. The only reason we escaped was because Major Faulton here detonated some mining charges and collapsed a tunnel. Damn near brought the roof down on us, but at least it stopped the bastards from following."

"How long ago was that?"

"We've been locked in this storage shed for eight days now. My powers are growing weaker. I've been using my psychic abilities to conceal our presence here from the cultists and try to keep tabs on their efforts. Bloody dangerous and a strain on my sanity, but you couldn't hope to begin to understand what I mean. I've been praying that my emergency beacon would attract some attention from the war-efforts at the nearby Forgeworld. And I suppose it did."

"My men may be fewer then you had hoped for, but we will endeavour to help you destroy this foul thing with all our strength. If we get you to the surface-"

"You don't understand. There's no time for that," Hagen muttered, with a groan he lifted himself up from the crate and walked slowly towards Zano. "By this time, those wretches will have managed to complete the shrine. That tremor you've probably noticed in the ground? It's the reverberations from their ceremony. They're trying to summon a Greater Daemon from the Warp onto this world. Do you have the slightest idea what that is?"

Zano, opened his mouth to answer, but the words didn't seem to come. His heart was in his throat.

"No clue?" Hagen asked. "Count yourself blessed by your ignorance. I'll tell you what it means for you and our men though. If we do not stop this infernal ceremony from being completed, if these heretic madmen succeed in their goal, then the effects of our failure may mean every world in this sector could be doomed to damnation."

"But-but there are no ships here to transport an army off-world," Zano stammered, thinking of the report he had received and studied before disembarking. "Surely the situation will be contained-"

"If these maniacs have to build a warp-craft from mining scrap and our desecrated corpses roped-together, then they'll bloody do it!" Hagen bellowed. "And when they do, the first place they will surely head towards is Jeron Minor, Colonel, your homeworld. If you want to prevent everything you hold dear from being consumed by the Ruinous Powers, then you will treat this threat as seriously as I do."

"...What do you need us to do?" Zano finally managed to ask.

"Help me destroy the summoning shrine," Hagen stated. "Even if the only use you'll be is in dying, your deaths might still buy me enough time to halt their infernal ministrations."

"How can we destroy it? My men carry only light weaponry and a few grenades."

"I picked this shed to hide in for a reason. These creates are filled with mining explosives. Alone they're not particularly potent, but with enough of them made into a satchel charge we should be able to destroy the thing." Hagen explained. Zano felt like a simpleton for not noticing the explosive warnings on the boxes around him, and nervously waved Kevar and Pote with their flamers out of the room. The Inquisitor had not seemed alarmed by the possibility that they might all be blown sky high, but then again perhaps he could just psychically shield himself. Zano didn't have that luxury, and so opted for caution.

"I'll have my men assemble such a device then. In the meantime I shall send for the rest of the troops on the surface to move-" he began to offer, but Hagen stopped him short.

"No. I need them to stay and defend the entrance to these mines. I can sense a great number of corrupted souls approaching this mountain from the plateau above, down from the south-east. The mine we are in was not a major one compared to the other facilities on this continent, hence the small size of the settlement at its base. The original cultists left it to spread across the mountains and slaughter or convert the rest of the people on Valindril. Those that have not already reached this place are returning now, in a large horde. If you want to have a chance of getting out, your men will have to hold the entrance."

"How many are coming? When?" Zano asked.

"To examine their numbers minutely would be a waste of my reserves of will and strength. But I can tell they number somewhere in the area of ten-thousand." Hagen said flatly. "And they will be here in less than an hour."

"Holy Terra," Zano breathed. There was no way his men could survive such a battle. No way at all. And yet they had to, if the task at hand was to be completed. But could they even do that much? Could they last long enough and inflict enough casualties to give the Inquisitor time to destroy the objective? The Colonel swallowed, and set his shoulders.

"Kellick?" He asked. "Patch me through to Master Sargent Grull."

The Vox-Operator nodded after a moment and complied, expertly tuning his equipment to the responding vox-set on the surface.

"Yes Colonel?" Grull's voice crackled roughly in the confines of the tunnel. "Have you found the Inquisitor?"

"I have, but the situation here is more dangerous then we'd thought. I have new orders for you," Zano said, and he struggled to keep his voice calm. "The cultists on this world are heading towards this mine. It is imperative that they not breach the entrance. They will by coming from the south-east, in less than an hour."

"Numerical strength?" Grull asked.

Zano closed his eyes, and swallowed a lump in his throat that had mysteriously appeared. "Their full strength is uncertain at this time, but it is likely they may outnumber you by as much as fifty to one."

For a moment, there was only silence from the other end of the line.

"We'll do our best sir," the Master-Sergeant replied tersely. "I'll see that the men are made aware of… what they're in for."

"No," Zano shook his head, "that should be my duty Grull. Stand by for another message." Turning to Kellick, Zano fixed the vox-operator with a needful stare. "Can you patch me through to all vox-units across the company?" He asked.

"From down here it'll be difficult sir, but I could manage it," Kellick replied, but his face looked pale as he adjusted his frequency. All the men in the unit looked pale and worried as a matter of fact. Zano knew that he was probably no exception. The idea that the lucky 7th would not survive its first mission was plainly on all their minds. And if left unchecked it might destroy their resolve utterly. As uncaring as the Inquisitor was, Zano knew that he needed their help to destroy that shrine, and if his men fell apart then they would die, and fail to save others. That was unacceptable.

"This is Colonel Zano speaking," he announced as soon as Kellick signalled the channel was ready. "I have found the Inquisitor. But our work here is not done. There is an evil thing hidden beneath these mines which the Inquisitor has asked us to destroy. But the heretics who uncovered it are returning from their evil deeds beyond these mountains, and are heading our way. They want to return for a ceremony which will unleash an unimaginable evil onto this planet; one which will threaten this entire system, including our beloved Jeron, if we do not stop it here and now. I have just informed Master-Sergeant Grull that the enemy force headed our way is much larger than our own. In fact, for every one of us, there may be as many as fifty of them." Zano stopped his speech short, trying to think of a way to steel his men in the face of such odds. His men who had followed him with such loyalty and confidence to this blasted world. His men whom he had held such great hopes for, that had never once let him down in all their training and all their simulated battles.

"But do not let this break your spirits," he continued. "Inquisitor Hagen is relying on us to stem the tide and buy him time to do his work here. And I know you can do it. Everything I have seen of you in our practice, our preparations, tells me that you can. We have worked so hard, for so many years to earn the right to join in the glorious wars of the Imperium. This may not be the battle that we were expecting, but it is the battle before us nonetheless, and I know that you will face it with courage and determination. As your commanding officer it has been my honour to prepare you for this moment. I have seen you all fight in training as if each one of you were ten men, and I believe you will each fight like twenty now that a real battle is upon you. That puts the odds at around 2-to-1. And I think that we can manage that." He assured them, smiling despite himself. Around the Colonel his men seemed to straighten and lose their daunted expressions. His words had even seemed to affect the Inquisitor, who watched him with interest as he finished his address.

"Above all else, I wish to remind you that our lives are in the Emperor's hands," Zano told them, "and to remember that the Emperor protects. Zano out."

Kellick cut the transmission and the shed and tunnel became silent. Inquisitor Hagen looked at Zano curiously.

"Have your men ever fought against forces of the Archenemy before?" he asked.

"No." Zano answered.

"Have your men actually seen combat before this day?" Hagen wondered with a penetrating gaze.

"...No."

"Then I should not expect to see them again. Pray that they can hold the mines long enough for us to do our work. Now get your unit ready. They're about to enter hell."


	3. Chapter 3

With Inquisitor Hagen and his Storm Troopers taking lead of the Jeron men, Colonel Zano began to slip into a self-reflecting state of mind. Despite the bravado of the speech he had delivered to his men outside the mines, he was worried. Terrified even. How had this all gone so wrong? They were supposed to be on Brovonius with the rest of the regiment, fighting the Orks and gaining glory for their home-world. Instead they were about to sacrifice themselves to save its continued existence from the threat of a chaos incursion. And in all likelihood they would never survive to let anyone know, even if they were successful.

"Sir, a word with you?" Vangyre whispered beside him, breaking him from his bleak reverie.

"Yes Doctor?" Zano asked.

"About this mission to the...shrine. Must all of us go? Don't you think that we could let someone head back? Perhaps we might order a few of the men to go into hiding, live off the land and use the Inquisitor's beacon to try and attract another vessel. They could escape offworld and-"

"Far too risky, Doctor Vangyre," Inquisitor Hagen's voice sounded gruffly from ahead. Either his hearing was amplified or else he had been psychically reading the minds of the unit, Zano assumed, but in either case he had overheard the Medicae's idea.

"I understand your desire to try and save a few of your company," The Inquisitor said, though his tone implied how foolish he deemed it "but if we fail here, it will not matter, and if by some chance we survive I will use the beacon to make my way home regardless. I have left it behind for safe-keeping. I'll not put it in the hands of men who do not have the codes or authority to properly use it."

"Even if it might save lives?" Vangyre asked defiantly.

"It wouldn't save anyone in the long run. The only thing that can spare this sector is the destruction of that shrine." Hagen said bluntly. "And if you're not prepared to make the sacrifices required to achieve that goal, Doctor, then I can easily order my men to remove you from the equation."

One of the Storm Troopers shifted position as he walked, holding his hellgun a little higher and glancing over his shoulder in Vangyre's direction.

"That won't be necessary," Zano interceded, stepping between Vangyre and the Inquisitor. "We are all prepared to do what must be done to see this…thing destroyed. No matter the cost."

"Good, because I expect nothing less." Hagen said warningly, then glanced at Bangyre with a clinical eye. "In a way Doctor, we are very similar. But whereas you tend to the lives of dozens at most, I must tend to the lives of billions. And to that end I must look at a larger picture then you do."

The group went on in silence after that. The tunnels pressed in around them threateningly. Hagen had commandeered the charts and conferred mostly with his Stormtrooper subordinates, ignoring the Jeron soldiers unless they stumbled in the dark or made too much noise. He led them through a series of side tunnels, finally reaching a wide chamber with excavation supports holding its roof up and a metal walkway leading downwards into an ominously smelling passageway.

"Lights off. I want dead silence. There is something…unnatural ahead of us," Hagen muttered.

Zano signalled for the men to do as the Inquisitor ordered, and they crept up the passageway, barely daring to breathe. The grounds and walls were slippery here, making movement difficult. With the mine lamps extinguished it was difficult for them to keep their footing and several of the men nearly tripped and fell. Hagen and his Storm Troopers glided forward like predatory cats. They made the Jeron men look like amateurs. Perhaps, Zano thought, it was because they were. After all, their years of training meant nothing if they performed poorly in action. Perhaps that's all the Lucky 7th really were. Cannon fodder, meant to die so that other, better soldiers could get to their objectives. Zano thought of Mavald then, and shook his head. _No._ There were no better soldiers in the galaxy than his own men, because they had not said a word in protest this entire time. They were afraid, like he was. They were uncertain that they would survive the horrors ahead. But they kept going, kept following his orders, kept pressing forward no matter how dark or rank their path became. Zano was proud of them. And he hoped the Inquisitor would soon realize the worth of the soldiers he had received.

Because in Zano's mind, they were priceless.

"Cultists," Hagen said softly. "And something else. A trace of…" His sentence trailed away, as if he couldn't find the words, or had lost the hint of what he felt at first. "Tell your men to have their weapons at the ready. And to be prepared for something terrible."

"What's more terrible then those madmen we've faced?" Vangyre asked.

"Try Daemons," Hagen muttered. "Major Faulton, I don't want any of these heretic scum escaping to spread word. Take them all down before they can raise an alarm."

Faulton, the commanding Storm Trooper, inched forward, and his two surviving men took up position near him, each aiming a hot-shot lasrifle at a separate target. Zano peered around the bend of the rock wall to see if his men were needed to assist, and in doing so got his first good look at the cavern before them. He nearly retched. There were twelve cultists all told, engaged in piling human skulls together in a great stack. Some of the skulls were fresh enough that scraps of sinew still clung wetly to them, but that wasn't the worst sight in the room. It was the rough channel that had been recently dug into the base of the cavern. A broad moat, running in strange and unsettling patterns across the earthen floor, almost like an irrigation channel from the fields of Jeron. But it wasn't water in the trenches. It was human remains. The cavern was host to a man-made river of murder. A channel formed of blood and limbs. Gore lapped at the sides of it. Organs and sinew had been shucked off of human bodies and floated like raw pink islands in a sea of clotting red. Zano heard some of the men behind him who could see vomit. They did it quietly, somehow. He normally would have been proud of them for keeping their noise level down, but he was too distracted by the horror before him. This place was where the bodies of the cultists' victims had been disposed of. The sheer amount of violence that had been enacted in this place, the contemptuous, wilful butchery of human beings, the Emperor's children and fellow citizens of the Imperium, made Colonel Zano quake with disgust and rage. The sadists who had done this must be punished, he thought. Inquisitor Hagen must have felt the same, though his features were stoic and bore no sign of the revulsion so evident on Zano's face. He twitched his fingers, and Faulton and the other two Storm Troopers fired. Twelve shots in such quick succession speared through the cultists, felling all of them. Their accuracy had been perfect, and not even one of the miners was able to let off so much as a scream before falling. Zano was astonished. Trooper Fornig, the best shot in his company, would have been hard pressed to even drop two of them in that same amount of time. Each of the Inquisitors men had killed four with perfect accuracy. And yet Hagen frowned.

"One's still alive," He murmured. "Find him fast."

Before the men could respond, the surviving cultist scrambled to his feet and hurled himself onto the mound of skulls. The moment he entered the circle at its base a spark of light flashed in his body and he exploded in a shower of gore that washed over the grisly pile of bones. Whatever had caused the cultists sudden death began to work its power over the shrine, and the eye-sockets of the severed heads began to glow with ominous light. A shrill keening noise tore through the air and with a flash of crimson and purple smoke the bodies of tall humanoid creatures began to appear beside the shrine, exploding into existence like a profane warning flare. Their bodies were like raw, violent thought given form. Red muscular bodies, cloven feet on powerful legs, long lashing tongues, hideously elongated heads with vicious horns jutting out at each side. They raised glowing swords in the air and roared at the Inquisitor and his followers.

"What are they?!" Zano asked, fumbling for his laspistol.

"Bloodletters!" Hagen shouted. "Daemons of rage and violence! Do not let them close with us! Fire!"

The Storm Troopers blazed away unhesitatingly, letting off more shots in a single second with their overcharged weapons then even the fastest of Zano's men could hope to. One of the red monstrosities seemed to shatter and burn as the gleaming lances of lasfire pierced its semi-corporeal form. Its death-roar only seemed to drive the rest into a wilder frenzy, and the other seven Bloodletters flew forward. They moved with the savage grace of a being that only existed to kill. Their eyes blazed with hellish power, their red limbs carried them effortlessly out of the path of the Jeron's childish attempts to shoot them, and their mouths bellowed a profane language in a furious roar. Zano's men stood their ground bravely, but the daemons moved with such speed that not a single round of their fire came close to glancing the infernal creatures. Inquisitor Hagen was more familiar with their movements, and had other means of combating the creatures. Holding his hand out, he unleashed a shimmering bolt of psychic defiance that caused two of the Bloodletters to evaporate into glass-like shards of twisted nightmare fuel. The four remaining daemons bounded over the grisly river, somehow avoiding the promethium spewing from Kevar and Pote's flamers, and landed amongst Zano's unit. They moved so fast as to seem to flicker before the eyes of the horrified Jeron infantry, and so close there was no chance to escape. A Storm Trooper downed one of the beasts by shooting it in its gaping mouth as it leaped at him, but the blazing fragments of its corporal form washed over him as it was destroyed, and the remains ignited the cloth of his dark fatigues. He dropped to the ground calmly, rolling back and forth to extinguish himself on the earthen floor of the cavern.

Zano struck out at the next daemon, but the crimson monster seemed to slide effortlessly out of the way, and the colonel's blade clove into the ground instead, spitting dirt from its gears before jamming and becoming uselessly still. Trooper Pote saw the Colonel's plight and leveled his flamer, adjusting its setting to a narrower blast, and covered the daemon in a wash of blazing fire. The creature screamed in rage and crumbled to its knees, vanishing in a miniature explosion similar to the one that had birthed it into reality. Zano looked at Pote to silently thank him for his intervention. The trooper nodded in acknowledgment. Then a Bloodletter's sword bisected him at the waist.

Zano shouted in anger and horror as the two halves of the former guardsman limply struck the ground. The Bloodletter seemed not to hear him, turning instead to cut and hack apart more of Zano's men. The Jeron were being torn apart by the remaining daemons. Even the Inquisitor seemed hard pressed to deal with the infernal beasts that were lunging and striking from within the ranks of the men. Zano saw Trooper Lerman's head severed from his shoulders and Rafen's guts spilling out from a gaping wound in his mangled torso, screaming in pain before a pair of cloven hooves crushed his throat in and shattered the vox-set underneath him. And still more fell.

Zano had no recollection of getting on his feet again, but suddenly he was. He was barely aware of the act of tearing his chainsword out from the earth where it had stuck, revving its multi-toothed blade and sending the dirt clogging its mechanisms flying away in a violent spray. He only dimly observed himself dashing headlong towards the press of men where the daemons were wreaking havoc. He retained only the vaguest sense that he was leaping into the air, swinging his weapon downward with all of his power and feeling its saw-like blade shred the flesh and bone of one of the daemons. Nor did he seem to register the next rending blow he dealt it, or the next, or the next as well. In fact the only thing he seemed to fully understand was that the mangled remains of a Bloodletter were disintegrating at his feet, and that the skirmish was suddenly over. Hagen had slain the last of the daemons with a blow from his power-sword. But he seemed more annoyed then horrified at the loss of life around him.

"I count at least twelve of your soldiers dead." He called to Colonel Zano. Behind the Inquisitor, Major Faulton leaned over a moaning guardsman whose shoulder and gut had been badly mauled, and shot him in the head with his sidearm.

"Make that thirteen." The Inquisitor corrected. "I hope the rest of your men will last a little longer at the shrine."

Zano stalked over to the Inquisitor and stared furiously at him.

"How dare you make light of these men!" He seethed. "They are fighting and dying for you."

"Fighting poorly and dying quickly." Hagen corrected. "That decreases our chances of reaching our objective. Get them together and make ready to press on to the shrine. If I am correct we are very near."

"Have you no pity?!" Zano shouted. "What about the wounded?"

"Strip them of their grenades and any other explosives. Same with the dead. We'll need all we have."

"That's not what I meant!" Zano spat. Hagen looked dismissively at him, but this only made Zano more enraged. "If my men are not treated they will die."

"We're not stopping. Treatment or not, they'll die soon enough. I can sense the ceremony starting." The Inquisitor said dangerously. "Do you want to dawdle here while these heretics summon a daemon that's a thousand times worse than the ones you just fought?"

Zano looked at Vangyre, putting pressure on the stump of Trooper Judler's leg. He looked at the exhausted, terrified faces of the soldiers around him. He looked at the ceiling of the cavern, thinking of Grull and the rest of the company. The reverberations in the floor seemed to grow stronger and louder. Or perhaps that was just the beating of his heart. Nineteen out of his thirty-two hand-picked soldiers were now dead or incapacitated. More than half of the number he had brought. And they were not even yet at the shrine, where the fighting would be the worst.

"Colonel? Do you hear me?" Hagen asked irritably. "Because we are heading to that shrine immediately, and you can either come or join the dead here."

Zano cast a cold, venomous glare at him, before turning to Trooper Kevar.

"Get the grenades off the dead." He instructed the soldier. "And salvage those fuel tanks from Pote's body. We'll add them to the satchel too."

On the surface, Grull had relayed the Colonel's warning and orders to the rest of the company. Hasty defences were constructed near the mines entrance. In the outskirts of the facility, Harrick's platoon set up inside one of the hab buildings, barricading the entrances and using the few small windows as sniper positions, while the two Heavy Bolters of the unit were installed on the rooftop behind what little cover the air-vents and roof outcropping afforded. Kurkson's unit took position on the opposite side the throughway, using the chain-link fence and abandoned ore-hauling vehicles to create a kill-zone in front of the refinery. The company's lone Hellhound tank was stationed in the middle of the road and the Sentinels were close behind it, covering alleyways and open access points between the buildings and storage units with their multilasers. There was little speaking. The men were pale and nervous. They repetitively checked and rechecked power-packs, bayonet rings and trigger action. They sweated and fidgeted. Some prayed to the Emperor for forgiveness under their breath, or murmured the litanies of courage to steel their nerves. All of them waited with baited breath for a sign of the approaching cultists.

It was a sign far too soon in coming.

With a dimly growing roar, like the thundering dawn of a day of reckoning, an unfathomably vast mass of wild, screaming zealots spilled over the rise of the mountain pass and pressed towards the settlement. Their numbers were impossible to count. Dumbfounded, the Jeron men watched as the armoured part of thier contingent opened fire with heavy weaponry. The Sentinel walkers stationed near the outskirts of the mining station poured scarlet bursts of multi-laser fire into the forfront of the seething mass of cultists. Their pilots engaged the reversal function of the thin-legged machines, trying to manoeuvre backwards from the horde while still scoring kills, but this made them too slow to escape the rush as the wave of maddened miners reached the settlement fringes. In a surging tide of furious human limbs, the cultists knocked the Sentinels over, toppling the walkers to the ground where they were bashed and rocked by the furious crowd of blood-thirsty miners. The pilots resolutely continued holding down on the firing mechanisms of their vehicles' weapons until they were finally pulled from the shattered cockpits and ripped apart by the hands of the mob.

The lone Jeron Hellhound spewed a torrent of fire at the rushing horde, moving steadily backwards as the blazing promethium scorched and roasted the maddened cultists alive. They kept coming. No matter how far the light tank backed away and how many blackened and charred corpses fell before its turret-mounted flame-cannon, there were more behind them, and around them, and suddenly on top of them. Berserk miners with drills fused to their arms began boring into the Hellhound's metal hide, howling in profane delight while others smashed at its turret hatches with utility hammers, pickaxes and blood-smeared metal pipes. The tank crashed backwards into a foundation wall and was soon buried in a writhing avalanche of hatred. As the cultists drilled madly into the fuel-tanks, a blinding explosion consumed the Hellhound and many of the maddened savages surrounding it, but the loss was only a cup taken from an ocean of hate.

In the hab-buildings and refinery, the guardsmen could do nothing but look on in helpless anger and begin to pepper the raging hordes with las-fire and frag grenades. On the roof where Sgt Harrick's platoon were stationed the Heavy Bolters spat explosive anti-personnel shells at a furious rate into the crunching mass of cultists, causing eruptions of gore as the shells detonated. Special weapons troopers armed with launchers sent screaming grenade rounds into the mob, which threw mangled body parts into the air like water-drops splashing after a pebble was tossed in a pool. It seemed to only have as much effect. The cultists numbers were endless. Picks, drills and bare hands smashed at the barricaded doors of the hab-units where the Jeron sheltered. A massive press of bodies simply pressed into and bent over by force the chain-link fence at the refinery's limits. No matter how many the Jeron killed the tide of bodies would not cease. It was unstoppable, as implacable as death itself. The name of Khorne was chanted in blood-crazed joy each time a guardsman was killed. One-by-one, the Jeron men were beaten, stabbed, gutted, brained, crushed, mangled and torn to shreds. Sargent Hurrick detonated a fragmentation grenade as he was pulled by cultist hands out the window of his building. The heavy bolter gunners fired until their ammunition ran out and the cultists broached the top floors of the main buildings, where they were hurled off the roofs into the arms of the vicious masses below.

At the refinery, some of the soldiers had managed to turn on the smelter units, and kicked over molten vats of Ceramite ore onto the heads of the deranged miners who broke into the smelting bay. Skin and sinew melted and blended with the liquid metal, and for a few minutes the Jeron cheered as the cultists were stymied in their onslaught. Their jubilation was short lived. The miners kept on coming, and each body that fell writing into the pools of burning ceraminte became a stepping stone for the man behind him. Feet burned and gave way to the scalding hot ore that covered the ground, but the cultists persisted, falling and stumbling on mutilated legs, clambered over the bodies of the dead before them, until a carpet of human flesh covered the floor and access was again made easy to the interior of the building. The Jeron troopers fought desperately, but the results were the same. The Khorne-worshippers bore down on them, stabbing and killing. Only when the last of the soldiers in the area had been reduced to nothing more than smears of gore scattered about the ground and walls did the miners move on again, flowing towards the entrance of the mines like an angry and unstoppable wave.

The Shrine-cavern was enormous. Its roof was at least a hundred feet high. Massive stalactites hung downwards like mighty stone fangs, while stalagmites on the hard rock floor pointed up at them in answer. The whole place was bathed in a hellish glow, for at the centre, on a natural dais of stone, stood the shrine itself. Eight thousand human skulls assembled into eight giant posts. Runes were painted in blood all around the room. A hundred cultists knelt and raved with blasphemous tongues, speaking the words to bring the shrine's occupant into reality. Waves of warp energy flowed out from the thing, shaking the foundations of the stones and growing louder and more potent with each emanation.

"They're getting close. We've got to stop it now," Hagen muttered. For the first time Zano saw real anxiety in his eyes. That was not good.

Major Faulton had combined all but a handful of the Jeron's grenades and the mining explosives into one potent satchel-charge. The Storm Trooper officer had also rigged up a detonator and given that to the Inquisitor. The important work was to be done by Hagen and his retinue, it seemed. The remaining men of the Jeron Lucky 7th had assumed an already-dead attitude to their mission. This close to the shrine, seeing the abomination with their own eyes, they understood that they were hopelessly unprepared for what lay ahead. Only Colonel Zano's presence was keeping them from going mad with horror. And Zano himself was not entirely immune to the terror the shrine and its worshippers inspired.

"Can we throw the bomb?" He asked nervously.

"We're too far." Hagen shook his head. "We need to get closer, and I need to close the portal they're opening. Too much warp energy is coming through."

"I'm not sure how much good my men will be against the powers of the Warp." Zano said hesitantly.

"I don't expect much of them or you, except to slow down those heretics and daemon-worshippers a little while my men and I take out the shrine," Hagen hissed. "We'll go in after a grenade volley, straight towards that worship circle. Set four of your best marksmen to stay back and give us covering fire. The rest should prepare for a tight melee. I'll ignite the explosives when we're near enough to the shrine."

"And after that?" Zano asked nervously.

"If anyone is still alive, we retreat and hope that your men still hold the mine gate. But we'll worry about that when we come to it." Hagen said grimly.

Grull stared down the roadway that led up to the mine. They were coming. Grull had heard the screams and desperate cries over the vox sets before the lines went silent. He knew that both platoons must be dead, and the vehicles scrap. He was determined to hold the line for their sakes, as well as for Colonel Zano and the Inquisitor. The hundred-some men who were the last line of defence at the mine-gate had had time to set explosive traps and assemble barricades from loading crates, scrap bins and other blocky mining equipment. The heaviest line had been constructed fifteen meters before the mine-gate itself, and Grull was using this as a command post. Beside him was Sargent Atticus, proudly holding high the company standard, and the twelve finest sharpshooters in the company, who had taken vantage points atop the barricade with their long-las rifles, for sniping at the higher vantage point would be easier. Eighty meters down from this blockaged was another line of creates and storage detritus, where the bulk of Grull's men knelt and exchanged nervous glances as they readied themselves for the coming onslaught. There were fifty of them all told, including the remaining heavy bolter teams and Specialist Parson's mean autocannon. Forty more men were positioned a hundred meters further down the sloping roadway, in a hastily dug trench with a scant scrap metal line in front of it. This was the nearest line to the pathway that led to the refinery and hab-units where the cultists were coming from. It was a classic multi-layered defensive grid. Exactly like the one Colonel Zano had caught them in during the Harpeni valley exercises. They had been mock-slaughtered to a man in that simulated battle. Grull intended the same fate for the blood-maddened hordes approaching them.

They heard the cultists clearly before they saw them. There were shouts and war-cries speeding through the air toward the Jeron troopers. Foul names of foul gods were being called upon, and agonizing deaths were promised in the sound of the gleeful roars that followed their pronouncement. Unlike their slow but ferocious slide into the hab-zone the horde was moving faster now, having tasted blood but not being sated by it. The first line opened up with precise fire the moment the first of the chaos—sworn miners lurched into sight, and the heavy bolters opened up moments later as more and more bodies began to appear from around the rocky passage that barred the way up from the left of the road. The air was lit up by fusillades of lasfire coming from all three lines on the roadway. The flamers had been stationed at the first line and belched forth cleansing fire onto the cultists who drew near to the fore-front of the line. They spat their promethium fuel in short bursts at first, not wanting to waste precious fuel, but soon the bursts became longer and more sustained. The number of heretic-miners spilling around the corner of the roadway and fighting for position on the approach up the mine-gate was becoming greater by the second.

The cultists were climbing over the small barrier now, grappling and struggling with the guardsmen at the first line. Grull squinted and bit his lip, then turned to his vox-operator Bolton and gave the order to fall back to the next barrier. The Jeron were fighting tooth and nail now, and even with the autocannon blowing huge gaps in the enemy mob with its relentlessly powerful shells, the withdrawal went dangerously close to a rout. With the covering fire from the Heavy bolters and lasrifles of their brothers in arms, most of the troopers reached the second line. Yet in giving up that ground, another withdrawal could not be so easily called. Fortunately the ground they had lost still held a few surprises for the heretics. Grull waited for an opportune moment and then activated one of the traps. A second trench had been dug behind first line, and within it had been buried a set of high tension support cables that the Jeron had found within the mine entrance. Grull had ensured that the company combat engineers rigged them to snap on an electric signal. As soon as he flipped the toggle on the repurposed surveyors control unit, the cables lashed into the air like wild tentacles, ripping through the press of bodies above and near them, severing limbs and bisecting anything in their path. The death toll was impressive and the wounds suffered by the injured were horrific. Yet it barely slowed their ascent up the hill.

"Master-Sergeant! Parson's team reports they're almost out of shells for the autocannon!" a soldier shouted to Grull. "They need to pull back here."

"Get the Chimera to move up and cover their retreat," Grull ordered, signalling for the armoured transport to move down the roadway. Its multilaser was sending a constant shower of hot death into the cultist ranks, but for each one of the raving heretics who fell five more seemed to take his place. The mob kept moving up and on. More and more of them were clambering over the second barricade; maniacs who had mutilated their bodies as much as their souls. There was barbed wire strung into their flesh, profane words carved into their bodies and blood anointing their faces and hands. Some of that blood belonged to Grull's fellow guardsmen, he knew.

"Atticus. Let's get down there," he said. The standard bearer nodded. Both were close friends who took their duties seriously. And both were ready to give the chaos cultists a taste of the Imperium's might. Grull lifted the power fist encasing his right hand high and waved it at the Chimera. It slowed long enough to let both him and Atticus clamber up its back, then rolled aggressively down the roadway towards the barricade.

On top of the vehicle Grull hung on doggedly, while Atticus bravely raised the Company standard high in the air, the icon of the Jeron Illustrious 1st regiment, Lucky 7th company giving the embattled troopers a sign to rally for as they saw it descend down the hill towards them. The Khornate mob could sense a renewed sense of spirit and strength from their opponents and responded with even greater displays of violence.

Trooper Vanol went down just as Grull and Atticus leaped down from the Chimera, speared through the side by a metal pole hurled through the press. Trooper Bern fell with his skull cracked open by a towering cultist's sledge-hammer. Grull shot the malevolent brute through the neck while racing towards the barricade, and Colonel Zano's Chimera kept pouring fire into the lines behind as it collapsed. Atticus waved the flag and shouted the Jeron's battle-cry, "Hearts strong, for Jeron-Minor and the Emperor's Glory!" as he planted it into the ground and began firing his own sidearm in to the press. Grull smashed and struck with his piston-driven glove, its crackling power-field disintegrating flesh and bone wherever he struck. Grull felt brain and blood splatter against his tunic as he crushed skulls and punched off limbs with frightening ease. But no matter how much damage they inflicted it never seemed enough. The flamers were running low on fuel. More guardsmen were falling and more cultists were getting through. They were clambering over the bodies of the dead, paying their fallen allies no heed be they dying or dead in their scramble to reach the Jeron and spill their blood. Kaymore was pulled over the edge of the barricade, lashing out wildly with his knife and screaming defiance. Furlon was gutted and dropped to the ground bleeding out. Murges had his own bayonet turned on him and was stabbed in the throat and chest repeatedly by a wild-limbed cultist so caked in dried blood he looked half a daemon. The snipers at the last barricade kept up a withering pace of headshots and crippling wounds to the miners who reached the top of the crates and scrap, but even the barricade was coming apart now. The sheer weight of bodies pressing against the hastily constructed wall was tearing it apart, and finally it gave way. Like a wave of filth and hate the cultist mob broke over the line and swept among the Jeron men, kicking, biting, stabbing and rending. Grull kept smashing, behind him Atticus blazed away with his laspistol, so many shots coming so quickly that the weapon's power cell was overheating to the point where it was burning the standard bearer's fingers through his gloves. But there were too many to stop. Grull knew it, and he knew he had to give way.

"Fall back! Back to the third barricade and then into the mine!" he bellowed. It was the Jeron men's last chance and last defence. But getting there would be a challenge. The mob was right behind them, pouncing on any troopers that lagged behind and rending them to pieces. But Grull had one more diversion in store. Pulling a flare from his belt pouch as he ran, Grull triggered the device and hurled it over his shoulder. He didn't bother to see where it landed. As soon as the bright red flash ignited among the press of charging bodies the engineers at the last barricade understood what Grull needed, and flicked a switch on a control box. Grull covered his ears as Krak grenades that had been imbedded into the rock face on the eastern side of the roadway exploded with tremendous force, shattering huge chunks of solid stone from the cliff that dominated the western side of the path to the mines. Boulders tumbled down into the press of bodies below them, crushing dozens of men at once, while smaller jagged shards cracked skulls open and broke limbs. It slowed the horde down, but not for as long as Grull would have hoped. Some primal, inhuman will was driving the miners on, causing them to ignore their own wounds in the hopes of inflicting injury on the Jeron. They came fast and vicious.

Grull had almost made it to the barricade line when a pair of hands grabbed the tail end of his jacket and pulled him to the ground. A snarling cultist with open wounds on his face beat and clawed at him. One blow from Grull's power fist dispatched the wild miner, but he was only the first of many. Before Grull had regained his footing more of the cultists were on him, punching and stabbing, almost striking into each other in their attempt to kill the doughty Jeron soldier. Grull shouted in pain as a jagged saw-blade slashed into his shoulder, but he had lagged behind in the retreat to the last barricade, and only Atticus heard him. The standard bearer bellowed the Jeron war-cry to alert the other troopers near him, and planted the company flag into the roadway, the metal end of the pole breaking into the hard dirt and wedging there, its banner blowing proudly and defiantly in the wind. Four other Jeron guardsmen turned in their flight and joined him in a dash towards the beleaguered Grull. It was practically suicide, but this seemed the hour for do-or-die actions. Clubbing with rifle-butts or stabbing with bayonets, the Jeron clove their way into the press surrounding Grull and heaved the wounded master-sergeant up and out, half-helping and half-dragging him up towards the final barricade. Atticus fell dying with an emergency axe buried in his spinal column, and two more of the troopers were hacked apart as they fired into the press to buy Grull more time. But the master-sergeant would not have made it to the last barricade if not for the even more courageous and reckless action of the crew of Colonel Zano's Chimera.

Grull could barely see for the blood dripping in his eyes, and a blow from a cultists club had set his ears ringing, but the sound of the armoured transport driving close by him and then passing with greater speed was unmistakable. The transport was charging the mob of miners, throwing itself into a death-trap to purchase a few more minutes of life for Grull and the others. He would have tried to recall the vehicle if he had thought that its crew would listen, but he knew they wouldn't. Instead he mumbled a thanks to them they could not and would never hear, as the Chimera smashed into the lines of cultists chasing him, crushing miners beneath its tracks and hurling bodies into the air. Even the maddened Khorne worshippers knew better than to stand in its way, but there was little room to move in the thick press of bodies. The armoured transport drove a furrow of slaughter into the heretic lines, but despite the bravery of the crew, their vehicle would not counter-act the laws of physics. The sheer weight of bones and flesh before them, living or dead, meant that the Chimera made it only forty meters down the roadway before more movement became impossible. The driver continued to push the engine of the vehicle though, overheating it until it almost burned out. When he realized it would go no further, he looked to his co-pilot and nodded. The horde had turned its attentions to the trapped carrier, beginning to hack and smash at it and drill their mining tools into its sides as they had done with the Hellhound earlier. As the gunner resolutely fired the turret's multilaser into the press of cultists that had begun to assail it, the driver unpinned a krak grenade borrowed with fatalistic forethought earlier from another trooper, and let it roll back through the vehicle towards the fuming engine.

The catastrophic explosion that resulted from the wreck of the Chimera killed twice as many as the vehicle's charge had. Yet it only seemed to make the mob more blood-crazed and furious than ever before. They surged towards the barricade, the last defence the Jeron held, and knew that their prey was cornered. Grull stood and watched as they clambered over the crates and storage lockers, pushed down sheets of metal or pulled away wooden posts, as they swarmed the outer edge of the wall. The heavy bolters had been abandoned due to their weight. The flamers were out of fuel. There were no more grenades. The Jeron could no longer fight. But they were not out of options. Grull watched sadly as another of his comrades was yanked from the barricade and killed out of sight by the miners. He turned to the mine door and signalled. According to this last prearranged order, the company engineers began to close the heavy metal barrier that provided the only access to the mines.

"Into the mines! Last chance! Leave or die fighting!" He shouted. Wounded troopers were pulled into the shadow of the mine's interior by comrades as the giant door began to descend. There would only be a minute or two at the most before it closed completely. Grull knew it, and still he stood and fired his laspistol into the press of bodies that were now breaking over the barricade, overcoming it as they had overcome all obstacles before. He shouted one more time for his men to retreat, flee and get to safety. Most of them didn't seem to hear. Instead they stood beside Grull, firing away at the oncoming horde, standing together in the face of their deaths and resolutely defying it with every shot. The few Jeron who had escaped into the mine saw Master-Sergeant Tobin Grull and the last of his men struggling futilely in a sea of foes, before the gate lowered fully and parted them forever.

The sounds of fighting outside persisted for a long time after that, all the same.


	4. Chapter 4

In the throng of chaos-taken miners adulating the skull-adorned shrine, one cultist found his dark reverie interrupted by a strange _chunking_ sound, and turned aside for one moment in his worship of the great tower of skulls to see if he had heard rightly or merely imagined it in the wild revelry of the warp pulses. It turned out that he had indeed heard something. A round grenade struck the ground near to him, rolled forward and exploded into a thousand shrapnel fragments, tearing the miner apart and killing several of his fellow cultists. More grenades, some fragmentation and others flash-blinders exploded alongside this, and then the Jeron made their charge.

With the Storm Troopers at his side, Inquisitor Hagen dashed across the floor of the cavern, firing his Inferno Pistol into the dazed crowd around the shrine. The super-compressed blasts of radiation melted men outright, leaving smeared stains on the pulsating cavern floor. Zano was right on the Inquisitor's heels, with Vangyre and Kellick on his left and right. The Colonel revved his chainsword and braced himself for the battle at hand. He was outraged, and he was terrified. Purple mist flowed at his feet, with electric sparks and ominous surges flowing through its diaphanous breadth, which made him feel struck by vertigo if he looked too long. Red surging lights danced before his eyes, leaping from the flesh of cultists to the rocks of the cavern walls. Monstrous sounds reverberated through the stones all around. True to the Inquisitor's words, Zano felt that they had indeed entered hell.

Snarling cultists rose up to meet the intruders as they charged, enraged at the interruption of their blasphemous ceremony. These were not like the ones the Jeron had encountered before. These were not maddened wretches with wild eyes and twitching fingers. These were the brutal, the fierce and the utterly dammed. The core of the cult, strongest in both body and twisted faith. Some were possessed, showing outward signs of the warp-things that had overtaken their bodies. They sprouted horns, claws, tails and hooves, and they used them to vicious effect. Two of the troopers beside Zano were gored and lacerated before they had a chance to fire their weapons more then once. The Colonel swore at their deaths and struck and hacked at anything that came near him as he ran, following the Inquisitor's footsteps as closely as he dared. Hagen was roaring battle oaths and cutting swatches through the enemy ranks with his power sword now, which left cool blue lines in his vision that stood out amidst the hellish red and purples of the warp miasma covering the floor and emanating from the shrine. Cultists leaped and charged to meet them, shaking off the effects of the blind grenades too quickly. In the presence of their shrine, with their ceremony so close to completion they fought with a fury unrivalled. The Inquisitor's charge began to falter, and soon slowed to a near-halt as the press of bodies surrounded them. Zano's heart raced as he realized the reverberant booming in the ground had reached a fever pitch. The empty eye sockets of the skulls set into the shine had begun to glow with a dull light that seemed to be growing stronger by the moment. Zano's attention was torn from it when a possessed miner bellowed at him and leaped forward from the melee, tearing the head off of Trooper Kolt as he came. He was a thickly built brute with snapping teeth and two large horns sprouting from the ravaged skin at his brow. A grating power-saw had somehow become fused to its left arm, and its right hand had grown long scything claws that were slick with blood. His eyes were full of malevolent intent as he slashed at Zano, who only narrowly managed to duck out of the way of its charge. Out of nowhere, Hagen stepped forward and slashed the creature in two with contemptuous ease. He spared a single look at Zano to make certain he was alive before whirling back into the thick of the fighting, hacking his way towards the shrine. The three Stormtroopers doggedly fought to keep beside him, using combat knives to deadly effect, but the Jeron were faltering. Zano had barely regained his feet when from his left a lumbering drill servitor, twelve feet tall and transformed by daemonic influence into a tower of violence smashed into their midst, splitting one guardsman apart with a stab of its earth-borer drill in a gory explosion of torn sinew and ruptured organs, and trampling another under its spiked foot, where the trooper's body stuck and remained like a piece of bloodied muck as the daemon-servitor turned and plodded towards another victim.

Vangyre yelled something, pulled Zano out of its way and hauled him towards the shrine. The Company Medicae had dropped his laspistol and now held one of the troopers' rifles, firing it one-handed while guiding Zano away from the thick of the battle. Behind them Trooper Kevar was dispensing the last drops of fuel from his flamer into the cultists trying to cinch their approach off from the right. Zano and Vangyre passed just as his tank ran empty. Kevar wasted no time in hurling the weapon at the nearest attacker and then pulling out his combat knife. The Jeron troopers fought with bravery and strength, despite their fear and despite their unlikely odds. They seemed to be accomplishing their part of the plan, for Hagen and the Storm Troopers had indeed made it almost to the inner circle of enthralled worshipers. Major Faulton raised the bag of improvised explosives high to hurl it at the shrine, but before his arm went fully back a cultist with bat-wings pounced on him and knocked the satchel into the press. Hagen shouted in anger and burned the beast off with a bolt of psychic energy, but the bag was lost in the press and miasma of warp energies.

"Find it! Hurry!" the Inquisitor railed. He was hacking and stabbing the mostly immobile worshippers around the shrine as he called. "We're almost out of time!"

As a final wave of energy rumbled out of the shrine, Zano realized that the Inquisitor was wrong.

They were already out of time.

The cultists wrapped in prayer around the shrine cried out as one and fell dead to the ground, their souls burned out and consumed by the power of the warp as the final price of their ceremony. For it was completed. With an earth-shaking blast and an ear-shattering roar, the summoning shrine was suddenly gone, and in its place blazing hole seemed to tear itself into the fabric of reality. Zano was too terrified to gaze at it directly, but he understood what it was. A gateway to the warp had been opened on Valindril X, and the denizens of the ethereal nightmare realm had been given free access to his reality.

Things came. Sprawling forms of insanity made real, things with hooks and tendrils, tubes and sacs and tentacles and streamers and other unnameable shapes arrayed in ways no living thing was ever meant to be shaped. Hagen incinerated some of these as they came at him with a wave of psychic force, but the rest began to spread into the crowd at the base of the dais, attacking cultist and guardsmen alike. The battle turned from fury to madness. Zano lashed out with his chainsword and split apart a gelatinous worm-thing with eyes where no eyes had a right to be, while Vangyre shot apart a being made entirely of mouths. Faulton's Storm Troopers were lost to sight, struggling somewhere in a press of bodies and claws and horns and pseudopods. The satchel was nowhere to be seen. Zano knew they were lost without it, but he had no time to look. Hooting, screaming warp things were everywhere. But the worst was yet to come. The true being the cultists had died to bring into reality had finally made itself known.

A gleaming red form began to roll out of the wounded air where the shrine had been, half smoke and half sinew at first, not yet formed, but growing by the second into a giant winged monster the size of which dwarfed all else in the chamber. Unshaped energy became powerful flesh, and two shining beacons of fell light resolved themselves into a pair of glowing yellow eyes. A mouth filled with fangs and a lashing tongue followed these, and soon the daemon's head loomed over the battle!

"I AM ARGAMANX THE EVER-BLOODED!" It roared "EATER OF FLESH AND DRINKER OF SOULS! SEE ME, AND PERISH IN DESPAIR!"

Several of the Jeron stopped fighting, too numbed by the horror of what they saw to struggle anymore. Even the cultists seemed awe-struck by the thing they had unleashed. It was massive, fearsome, and utterly unstoppable. Or so it seemed. As the rest of the Daemon's body began to achieve a similar state of cohesiveness to its face, a blue barrier crackled into life around it, forbidding the rest of its form from completely leaving the Warp and entering the real world. Standing at the foot of the dais, eyes blazing with psychic energy, Inquisitor Hagen stood and defied Argamanx. The Daemon roared in fury and strained against the barrier, but seemed to be unable to break it.

"Men of the Jeron 7th! To the Inquisitor!" Zano shouted, realizing that Hagen was unprotected while holding the barrier up. "To his side! Guard him!" he called again, dashing across the misted-ground with Vangyre and Kellick behind. The order seemed to jolt the Jeron into action, and those that could fought their way from the press towards the dais, battling hellspawn and blood-crazed worshippers to reach Inquisitor Hagen before something else did. Many did not make it. Kellick died first, his vox-equipment exploding in a shower of sparks as he was speared in the back by a multitude of claws that emerged from an undulating muscle-mass. Zano heard the vox-officer fall, but could do nothing to aid him or avenge him. He cut down another possessed cultist, kicked a worm-centaur in its crab-like face, and ducked under a three-pronged tail that some harp-shaped being was flailing viciously. Zano shot it repeatedly and jumped over its corpse, but its attacks had slowed him down. A hideously bloated cultist with piston-driven hammers for arms swung at him angrily. Zano knew he did not have time to get out of the way, but was somehow thrown clear. Vangyre had pushed him, but in doing so the Company Medicae was struck by the power-tools and batted limply into a stalagmite. Zano screamed in anger and shot the thing point-blank in the face as it lumbered towards him. He tried to see where Vangyre had landed. The Company Medicae was sprawled limply against a rock, dark red blood streaming from his mouth. Zano knew he was dying. Yet as his eyes began to cloud over, Vangyre seemed to notice something and with what strength remained in his broken body, pointed a finger through the press. Zano followed his direction, and noticed, wedged at the base of a stalagmite quite near him, emerging only barely from the misted floor of the cavern, was the explosive satchel. He dove for it, scrabbling across the ground with desperation fuelling his movements. Conjoined spider-things pawed at him, cultists tried to strike him down, but he somehow eluded them all and snatched the bag up in his right hand. He turned and clambered towards the dais, where the daemon of Khorne was still struggling against the Inquisitor's power. Whatever psychic powers Hagen was bringing to bear against the daemon, they were tremendous, but he was only a mortal and his body could not take such strain forever. Zano knew it. He knew he had to arm the satchel, throw at the daemon and end it. The closer he drew to the thing, the less he felt capable of that single action. Its power was sapping his strength simply by his understanding it existed. The daemon ceased for a moment in its battering of the psychic wall holding it back, and regarded the trembling Zano with what could have been called surprise. It sensed his intentions, knew what Zano was holding. Its eyes narrowed, and its half-formed body seemed to lower itself towards the level of the Jeron Colonel, staring at him through blue barrier with interest.

"Hold mortal!" Its voice rumbled. "Do not use that weapon."

It had fixed its eyes solely on Zano now, and a clever smile played across its hideous features. "I can offer you more purpose than the witch-breed does. More glory than a small death in this cave."

Zano looked at Hagen. The Inquisitor was bleeding from his eyes and parts of his hair had begun to turn white. His tattered long-coat was streaming backwards from the force of his psychic output. He seemed to be diminishing in front Zano's eyes by the second. The Colonel looked back at Argamanx. This thing, this Daemon, was blood and pain incarnate. Its still-unrealized body shimmered and gleamed with barely restrained power. Its eyes were light-scored wounds that promised an eternity of murder. Compared to the Inquisitor, Zano felt that the daemon might indeed be greater. He had stopped walking now, and though he did not drop the satchel, he felt it slip from his grasp till it was merey hanging from his hand by its shoulder-strap.

"What do you offer?" he asked through lips that were dry and a throat that was suddenly parched.

"I sense your anger, your desires." The daemon laughed. "You hunger for glory, for battle with purpose! I will give it to you. You will rip and tear and maim and slay in the name of my master, He who is War-Given-Form! You will slaughter countless beings across countless worlds! You will spill blood again and again as you take skulls for the Throne of Skulls! This is the destiny you can seize for yourself!"

Zano faltered. He couldn't deny it. What the daemon said was true. He wanted this. On some part of his spirit, on some level, Zano relished the thought. To enter a battle without plan or goal beyond slaying his enemies? To kill again and again, across the galaxy whenever he pleased, not to be shunted aside on useless tasks? That would fulfill his bloody heart. It would sate his hunger for battle a million times over. It would-

"Don't listen to it!" Hagen called weakly, on his knees, temple throbbing, flesh-eye eye bloodshot, quivering from exertion but still holding his psychic barrier up.

"Ignore that worm! His kind is an abomination." Argamanx roared. "Sorcery is the tool of the weak!"

"It's trying to mislead you!" Hagen grunted. "If it assumes its full form then we are all doomed! Throw the satchel! Destroy the shrine!"

Zano blinked, wondering why his head felt clearer. Or was it clouded. His arm was stiff and sore, but he did not let the satchel fall. He did not raise it to throw either. Something was holding him back. Zano suddenly realized that he was holding himself back. His longing through fourteen years of meaningless service, his resentment at being turned away from true battle and being given this mission, his despair at learning the cost to his men the Inquisitor demanded, all came bubbling to the surface of his mind. He had hidden away these feelings, repressed them out of a sense of duty. But they were there, and they poisoned his thoughts. Zano looked at his chainsword dully. Was it right? Should he kill Hagen? He had only received grief from his involvement with the Inquisitor. What would he receive from the Warp?

From within the barrier, Argamanx smiled ferociously. He had been waiting for those doubts to enter the Colonels mind. And he answered them.

"See the power of the Blood God!" He exclaimed.

Zano twitched, and stared as his right hand. The only wound he had suffered on this mission, the cut on his finger he had so absent-mindedly inflicted on himself before coming to this world, exploded with red agony. As Zano stared, his limb splayed apart and the sinews writhed from the bones, reshaping themselves into something new. In seconds his hand was transformed into a daemonic red claw, and Zano could feel the power in it through his pain. There was raw strength in his hand now that could shred flesh with ease and cleave the bodies of his enemies apart. The explosive satchel dropped harmlessly to the floor as he stared at it in shock.

"Now! Kill the witch-breed with your blessed claw!" Argamanx ordered. "Strike him down and take his head with the power of your own body! Prove your loyalty! His life-blood will sign your pact to Khorne! An eternity of killing awaits you!"

Zano's eyes narrowed. The pain in his new hand was excruciating, but through it he saw the Inquisitor for what he was. His eyes had been opened by the daemon. Hagen was a callous wretch, an arrogant, self-important fool; a blustering bully who sent others to die for his goals. Perhaps he did deserve to die here. He had the blood of Zano's men on his hands. For leading them into this slaughter, he deserved to be killed. But the Colonel found himself confused, and briefly wondered if his men really had followed the Inquisitor, or instead if they had followed…himself.

Zano turned his gaze towards the battle still being waged behind him. He saw the last of his men still fighting, still dying in the press of chaos cultists and warp-spawn beyond the dais. They were not fighting for the Inquisitor. Their blood was not on Hagen's hands. They were fighting for Zano. It would be on Zano's if he failed in this final moment. There was one thing stronger than Zano's desire for battle. It was his loyalty to his own. To the men he had hoped to one day lead into glorious battle for the cause of the Emperor. And he realized that whatever his flaws, Hagen was an agent of the Emperor, fighting to save billions of human lives from an unthinkably horrific fate. If the sacrifice and bravery of the Jeron Lucky 7th was to mean anything, if their dignity and pride were to not be forever destroyed, then Zano had only one course of action left.

He activated his silent chain-sword in his still-human left hand, and raised it tremblingly above his right arm.

"NO!" Argamanx bellowed in anger. "A thousand years of war can be yours!"

"One day has been enough for me," said quietly, and brought the chainsword down against his possessed flesh, crying out in pain and defiance as he severed the daemonic limb from his body. The Daemon roared in fury as the arm it had gifted Zano with dropped to the floor in a spray of dark blood, and Zano let his chain-sword fall away. He stooped to recover the satchel with his remaining arm, but swayed unsteadily on his feet. He would pass out from shock and blood loss soon. Only his willpower and determination were keeping him conscious.

"DAMN YOU!" The daemon roared. "I OFFERED YOU GLORY!"

"Take your glory." Zano snarled through gritted teeth as he armed the timer and hurled the explosive charge straight at the daemon's face. "I have _ORDERS!_ "

Argamanx bellowed in fury. The Colonel pitched forward from the effort of the throw, and his body rolled away into the mist, no longer conscious from the exertion and blood loss. He did not see Inquisitor Hagen's grateful smile. Nor did he see the inquisitor, though wounded, exhausted and nearly depleted of all his psychic strength, extend his shield over the few surviving Jeron men as the satchel charges ignited and the cavern, cultists, daemon and portal were all consumed by a blaze of explosive fire. Colonel Zano saw only the dark and then a burst of whiteness that seemed to tear away all his pain and tiredness.

Beyond the mine doors, the horde of Khorne worshippers who had once been miners felt the death-knell of their dark master. Their blood-lust and anger, stoked to the boiling point by the resistance of the Jeron guardsmen, exploded. With no other subjects to vent their rage and instinct to slaughter upon, they turned on each other. Where before they had focused their fury and desire for battle on the Jeron, now they simply struck at whatever was closest to them. Heads were shattered. Flesh bitten. Eyes gouged. Spines snapped. Bodies rent limb from limb. The slaughter grew wilder and faster, and that only served to further drive the violence of the mob to greater heights. Blood washed down the roadway for miles. By the end only a few dazed stragglers remained, mindless, feral and weak. And they did not last long after that.

Three weeks later, a Mordian support barge filled with wounded guardsmen leaving the siege at Brovonius intercepted a signal from the world of Valindril X. It was an Inquisitorial beacon, requesting in garbled sentences that a transport land at a certain plateau and pick up a VIP for transport.

As the ship passed through the violent atmosphere of the mining world and neared the location that the beacon had specified, it detected thirteen life signs. When it landed roughly and its officer, a well-groomed young man on his second tour of duty in the navy disembarked to inspect the party, he saw that the thirteen were comprised of a tall man in a tattered long-coat, three Storm Troopers in battered black carapace armour and nine injured men in tarnished Guard uniforms. The guardsmen carried amongst them a single body wrapped in a black canvas tarp. They reverently bore it aloft like a relic. The Navy officer was taken aback at how dazed and quiet they seemed, but also at the protectiveness they seemed to have towards the body.

"Are you the Inquisitor?" He asked the tall man in the shredded coat.

"Of course I'm the bloody Inquisitor. Dameron Hagen of the Ordo Malleus," he announced, revealing an Inquisitorial rosette. The officer bowed respectfully and waved the man and his Storm Troopers aboard, but paused to stare at the soldiers who tramped up the ramp behind him.

"Wasn't there a whole company of Jeron guardsmen dispatched to this planet?" The officer asked, remembering some rumours he had heard in the siege camps on Brovonius.

"Yes," the Inquisitor stated gruffly. "The Lucky 7th Company were dispatched to assist me in my holy mission, though I will not share the harrowing details of the events that followed with you. They completed their duty, but unfortunately they were reduced to this mere handful in their service of the Emperor. They fought bravely against overwhelming odds. I will see the survivors returned back to Jeron Minor for treatment and rest."

"Lord Inquisitor, our transport is bound to Habiticus Marr for processing of the wounded from Brovonius; we do not have time for a detour to Jeron Minor."

The Inquisitor gave the officer a withering glare.

"Here's some free advice, lad. If you value your life, don't ever tell an Inquisitor what there is time for." Hagen growled. "I owe a debt to their commanding officer, and I will see it repaid. He was a man of rare character and will. He is going to be buried on his homeworld with full honours and whatever medal of valour you have that is sufficiently shiny and impressive. After that you may go where you will. Understood?"

The officer nodded rapidly.

"Good. Now get me off this damned planet. The Emperor's work needs doing, and I have another task at hand..."

 **The End**


End file.
